Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2019 Oct 30;9(10):e031909.
doi: 10.1136/bmjopen-2019-031909.

An investigation into the impact and implications of published papers from retracted research: systematic search of affected literature

Alison Avenell  1 , Fiona Stewart  2 , Andrew Grey  3 , Greg Gamble  3 , Mark Bolland  3
Affiliations

An investigation into the impact and implications of published papers from retracted research: systematic search of affected literature

Alison Avenell et al. BMJ Open. .

Erratum in

Abstract

Objective: Analyses of the impact of a body of clinical trial reports subject to research misconduct have been few. Our objective was to examine the impact on clinically relevant research of a group of researchers' trial reports ('affected trial reports') affected by research misconduct, and whether identification of misconduct invoked a reappraisal.

Design: In 2016, we used five databases and search engines to identify 'citing publications', that is, guidelines, systematic and other reviews, and clinical trials citing any of 12 affected trial reports, published 1998-2011, eventually retracted for research misconduct. The affected trial reports were assessed more likely to have had impact because they had hip fracture outcomes and were in journals with impact factor >4. Two authors assessed whether findings of the citing publications would change if the affected trial reports were removed. In 2018, we searched for evidence that the citing publications had undertaken a reassessment as a result of the potential influence of the affected trial reports.

Results: By 2016 the affected trial reports were cited in 1158 publications, including 68 systematic reviews, meta-analyses, narrative reviews, guidelines and clinical trials. We judged that 13 guidelines, systematic or other reviews would likely change their findings if the affected trial reports were removed, and in another eight it was unclear if findings would change. By 2018, only one of the 68 citing publications, a systematic review, appeared to have undertaken a reassessment, which led to a correction.

Conclusions: We found evidence that this group of affected trial reports distorted the evidence base. Correction of these distortions is slow, uncoordinated and inconsistent. Unless there is a rapid, systematic, coordinated approach by bibliographic databases, authors, journals and publishers to mitigate the impact of known cases of research misconduct, patients, other researchers and their funders may continue to be adversely affected.

Keywords: hip fractures; impact; randomised controlled trials; scientific misconduct.

PubMed Disclaimer

Conflict of interest statement

Competing interests: All authors have completed the ICMJE unified disclosure form competing interest form at www.icmje.org/coi_disclosure.pdf (available on request from the corresponding author). AG is a shareholder in Auckland Bone Density, a company that provides bone mineral density measurements. MJB and AG report grants from the Health Research Council of New Zealand during the conduct of this study. AA reports grants from NIHR during the conduct of this study. FS and GDG have no financial conflict of interest to declare.

References

    1. Bolland MJ, Avenell A, Gamble GD, et al. . Systematic review and statistical analysis of the integrity of 33 randomized controlled trials. Neurology 2016;87:2391–402. 10.1212/WNL.0000000000003387 - DOI - PubMed
    1. Gross RA, Editor-in-Chief . Statistics and the detection of scientific misconduct. Neurology 2016;87:2388 10.1212/WNL.0000000000003390 - DOI - PubMed
    1. Steen RG. Retractions in the medical literature: how can patients be protected from risk? J Med Ethics 2012;38:228–32. 10.1136/medethics-2011-100184 - DOI - PubMed
    1. Marcus A. A scientist's fraudulent studies put patients at risk. Science 2018;362:394 10.1126/science.362.6413.394-a - DOI - PubMed
    1. Davis PM. The persistence of error: a study of retracted articles on the Internet and in personal libraries. J Med Libr Assoc 2012;100:184–9. 10.3163/1536-5050.100.3.008 - DOI - PMC - PubMed

Publication types