For 20 years, the number of retractions of biomedical documents has quadrupled - why?

The number of reviews of European articles on biomedical sciences quadrupled between 2000 and 2021, a study of thousands of reviews showed.

Two-thirds of these articles were withdrawn for reasons related to improper research, such as data and image manipulation or copyright fraud. The analysis shows that these factors have caused a growing share of refusals to participate in surveys over a period of about 20 years.

"Our results show that improper research has become more common in Europe over the past two decades," write the authors, led by Alberto Ruano-Ravina, a public health researcher from the University of Santiago de Compostela in Spain.

Other research integrity experts note that the number of refutations may increase as researchers and publishers become better at investigating and identifying potential violations. More and more people are working on error detection and using new digital tools to check publications for suspicious text or data.