REASEARCH MISCONDUCT IN THE UNITED STATES DURING THE PAST DECADE
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Date
2019-08-09
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Johns Hopkins University
Abstract
This research was designed to investigate patterns of research misconduct across institutions in the United States in the past decade. Certain factors such as type of institution, size of the institution, funding of institution, number of publications, year of retraction, research administration structure, and occurrence rates were explored. The retraction database, National Institutes of Health (NIH), Office of Research Integrity (ORI), and individual institution websites provided access to information and or data on 336 retracted articles during the past decade. The publically available data was analyzed using standard statistical methods. The analysis of data supports that on average it takes 5.8 years for articles involved in research misconduct to be retracted. 2015 had the highest number of retracted articles (74) while 2011 had the lowest (6). 85% of research misconduct related retracted articles are from universities. The NIH had the most repeated research misconduct cases, having multiple retracted articles across various years (2009, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018). Out of 81 institutions, 38 (47%) had repeat offenses for at least 1+ year of research misconduct cases. The study provided evidence that there is a relationship between the amount of funding and the number of retracted articles. The relationship is negative meaning that the probability of having an article retracted is greater for smaller funded programs than higher funded programs. Throughout the decade there has been an increase trend of retracted articles due to falsification / fabrication of data within the United States.
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Research Misconduct