Instead of just a single Retraction of the Week, we go macro this week and look at overall retraction rates in scientific journals and highlight one particular retraction record breaking scientist, Professor Yoshitaka Fujii, M.D.
Each week, OTW publishes a recent scientific journal retraction arising from shoddy, lazy or downright fraudulent research. These are examples of researchers who omitted or falsified data, used data out of context or employed such awful logic that they were forced to retract their study.
These examples are collected by Retraction Watch(RW) and we are honored to be able to present them with permission from Retraction Watch to our readers. Retraction Watch was started in 2010 by Adam Marcus and Ivan Oransky, M.D.
Retractions on the Rise
The number of retractions in scientific journals has been rising rapidly the last few years. According to June’s Harper’s Index, there were only three retractions in such journals in 2003. By 2009, that number had risen to 180 retractions per year.
What’s going on? Is science getting less honest? Is it a byproduct of more papers being published?
We don’t have answer to the question of scientific honesty, but our friends at RW write that retractions are actually rising much more quickly than the number of papers, citing reports in the Wall Street Journal and Nature based on Thomson Scientific data. There have been ten times as many retractions in the past decade as in the past, compared to just 44% more papers.
Fujii’s Record
RW’s Oransky wrote on June 29, that 2011 was a record-breaking year, with a new record for retractions by one person alone. Yoshitaka Fujii, a Japanese anesthesiologist suspected of widespread data fabrications, faked his results in at least 172 published studies.
A web site called Jiji Press writes:
Tokyo, June 29 (Jiji Press)–A Japanese anesthesiologist made up a total of 172 fictitious research papers between 1993 and 2011, an academic society said Friday.
Yoshitaka Fujii, a 52-year-old former associate professor at Toho University, has denied fabricating research, according to the Japanese Society of Anesthesiologists.
The number of papers that he allegedly faked is the largest ever for any medical researcher, both in Japan and overseas, according to sources familiar with the field.
The society surveyed 212 articles written by Fujii that were published in a total of 41 Japanese and international journals. Of them, it found 172 fake research reports and three articles backed by real research. It was unable to assess 37 articles due to lack of scientific evidence.
Co-authors of Fujii’s articles were not sure of the content of his research, the society said.
Fujii’s retractions, according to RW, nearly doubles that of the current unofficial retraction record holder, German anesthesiologist, Professor Joachim Boldt, M.D., Ph.D., a leading researcher into colloids. He has been stripped of his professorship and is under criminal investigation for possible forgery of up to 90 research studies.
False Data, Fabricating Signatures
RW reports that a consortium of 23 journals led by Steven Shafer, editor of Anesthesia & Analgesia (A&A), earlier this year announced that it would retract any article of Fujii’s based on falsified data. “Already, several journals have retracted articles by the researcher. The investigation concluded that Fujii’s co-authors, with at least one exception, were unaware of his misconduct. Indeed, it appears he fabricated their signatures in many, if not most instances.”
According to a July 2, 2012 story in ScienceInsider, Fujii’s findings have been under a cloud since March when an analysis in the journal Anesthesia raised questions about his data. In April, 23 journal editors publicly asked 7 Japanese institutions named in the papers to investigate. The anesthesiology society took on the task because “it would have been difficult for any one institution to clarify what happened, ” says Koji Sumikawa, an anesthesiologist at Nagasaki University who headed the investigation.
Scientific Advocacy Journalism
We don’t know if science is getting less honest, but we have seen and reported on scientific journals entering the world of advocacy journalism. Such an editorial policy can only embolden researchers to push the envelope of interpreting data.
