Stern Andrew M, Casadevall Arturo, Steen R Grant, Fang Ferric C
Andrew M Stern Perelman School of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, United States.
Arturo Casadevall Department of Microbiology and Immunology, Albert Einstein College of Medicine, New York, United States; Department of Medicine, Albert Einstein College of Medicine, New York, United States.
Elife. 2014 Aug 14;3:e02956. doi: 10.7554/eLife.02956.
The number of retracted scientific articles has been increasing. Most retractions are associated with research misconduct, entailing financial costs to funding sources and damage to the careers of those committing misconduct. We sought to calculate the magnitude of these effects. Data relating to retracted manuscripts and authors found by the Office of Research Integrity (ORI) to have committed misconduct were reviewed from public databases. Attributable costs of retracted manuscripts, and publication output and funding of researchers found to have committed misconduct were determined. We found that papers retracted due to misconduct accounted for approximately $58 million in direct funding by the NIH between 1992 and 2012, less than 1% of the NIH budget over this period. Each of these articles accounted for a mean of $392,582 in direct costs (SD $423,256). Researchers experienced a median 91.8% decrease in publication output and large declines in funding after censure by the ORI.
被撤回的科学论文数量一直在增加。大多数撤稿与研究不当行为有关，这给资助机构带来了经济成本，并损害了行为不当者的职业生涯。我们试图计算这些影响的程度。从公共数据库中审查了与被撤回的手稿以及被研究诚信办公室（ORI）认定有不当行为的作者相关的数据。确定了被撤回手稿的可归因成本，以及被认定有不当行为的研究人员的发表产出和资金情况。我们发现，1992年至2012年间，因不当行为被撤回的论文导致美国国立卫生研究院（NIH）直接资助约5800万美元，占该时期NIH预算的不到1%。每篇此类文章的直接成本平均为392,582美元（标准差423,256美元）。研究人员在受到ORI谴责后，发表产出中位数下降了91.8%，资金也大幅减少。
