Pfeifer M P, Snodgrass G L
Department of Medicine, University of Louisville, KY 40292.
JAMA. 1990 Mar 9;263(10):1420-3.
Little is known about the ultimate scientific fate of retracted, invalid literature. We identified 82 completely retracted articles by electronic and manual methods and measured their subsequent use in the scientific literature by performing citation analysis. After retraction, these studies were cited, for support of scientific concepts, 733 times. Comparison with a control group revealed that retraction reduces subsequent citation by approximately 35%. There was no evidence that small, obscure journals, non-US journals, or non-US authors were disproportionately responsible for these citations. Although, after retraction, US authors accounted for a smaller percentage of citations, they continued to be the single greatest source. Several possible reasons why invalid information continues to be used were identified. These included a dearth of available information on retracted works; inconsistency in retraction format, terminology, and indexing; and an apparent lack of sufficient attention to manuscripts by some authors and editors.
对于被撤回的无效文献的最终科学命运，我们知之甚少。我们通过电子和人工方法识别出82篇完全被撤回的文章，并通过进行引文分析来衡量它们随后在科学文献中的使用情况。撤回后，这些研究因支持科学概念而被引用了733次。与对照组的比较显示，撤回使随后的引用减少了约35%。没有证据表明小型、不知名的期刊、非美国期刊或非美国作者对这些引用负有不成比例的责任。虽然撤回后美国作者的引用占比更小，但他们仍然是最大的单一来源。我们确定了无效信息继续被使用的几个可能原因。这些原因包括关于撤回作品的可用信息匮乏；撤回格式、术语和索引的不一致；以及一些作者和编辑显然对稿件缺乏足够的关注。
