![delays possible](http://www.retractionwatch.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/delays.jpg)
We’ve had a few unofficial record-holders here at Retraction Watch. The current leader in the retraction column, for example, is Yoshitaka Fujii, who will likely retract 172 papers. He took that record from Joachim Boldt, with just shy of 90.
Today, we’ll take a stab at another record, longest time between publication and retraction. The apparent record holders, at 25 years, are I.E. Swift and V. E. Milborrow, who were at the University of New South Wales in Australia when they published “Retention of the 4-pro-R hydrogen atom of mevalonate at C-2,2′ of bacterioruberin in Halobacterium halobium” in the Biochemical Journal in 1980. Here’s the retraction notice from 2005 (hat tip Jeffrey Furman and colleagues, who noted the retraction in a paper earlier this year): Continue reading And the winner for longest time on record between publication and retraction is…