Genetics articles have a high retraction rate, The Scientist reports. It notes that a recent analysis pegs their retraction rate to be four times higher than that of other disciplines.
Researchers from the Autonomous University of Madrid sifted through Retraction Watch's database to identify genetics papers that have been retracted and why. As they report in the Journal of Medical Genetics, Madrid's Rafael Dal-Ré and Carmen Ayuso uncovered 1,582 genetics articles published between 1970 and then end of 2018 that had been retracted. Based on an estimate that about 975,000 genetics articles were published between 1996 and 2017 and that there were 1,476 retractions in that time period, they calculated that there is 0.15 percent retraction rate in genetics, higher than the overall 0.04 percent rate.
For about a third of all these retracted papers, misconduct or duplication were cited as reasons for their retraction Dal-Ré and Ayuso report. They also note that non-medical genetics papers had a higher rate of fabrication or falsification than medical genetics papers, but that retracted medical genetics papers were more likely to lead to an investigation.