Retractions hurt academic careers, and may be worst for senior researchers

In modern academic publishing, retractions (where a published article is removed from the academic record) have become a fairly regular occurrence (a quick read of Retraction Watch will show you just how often this occurs). Articles may be retracted for many reasons, from simple mistakes in analyses or contaminated lab samples, to fabrication of data and results. A reasonable question to ask, then, is to what extent a retraction impacts on an academic's career. Oftentimes, the retraction comes years after publication of the article, and in the meantime the author has used the article to contribution to their reputation. Is their reputation damaged by the retraction, and if so, by how much? And, does the type of retraction (simple mistake, or serious misconduct) matter?

A 2017 article by Pierre Azoulay, Alessandro Bonatti (both MIT), and Joshua Krieger (Harvard), published in the journal Research Policy (and not retracted, ungated earlier version here), provides some answers. First, they note that the number of retractions has increased over time, as shown in their Figure 1:

You can see that the problem is getting worse over time. Or at least, you can see that the number of retractions is increasing over time. Maybe we have become more vigilant at recognising mistakes and misconduct, and ensuring those articles are retracted? It is difficult to say.

In any case, Azoulay et al. then looked at data from 376 US-based biomedical researchers with at least one retracted article that was published between 1977 and 2007, and retracted before 2009. They compared those authors with a control group of 759 authors with no retractions, made up of authors who published the article that was immediately after the retracted one in the same journal. They focus on the impacts on citations of the authors' published articles that are unrelated to the retracted one, because a retraction might negatively impact the entire line of inquiry, in terms of citations. They find that:

...the rate of citation to retracted author's unrelated work published before the retraction drops by 10.7% relative to the citation trajectories of articles published by control authors.

Azoulay et al. also find evidence that the citation penalty increases over time. In the sample of retractions as a whole, they don't find differences between the impact on high status (those in the top quartile of researchers in terms of the number of citations to their previous research) researchers and low status researchers (those in the bottom three quartiles). However, when they look at different types of retraction, they find:

...a much stronger market response when misconduct or fraud are alleged (17.6% vs. 8.2% decrease).

You might wonder why a simple mistake would have a negative impact on researchers. This arises because no one can be certain of a researcher's quality, and if a researcher has made a mistake in a published article, then the perception of their quality are a researcher is reduced (and with it, citations of their other work).

When it comes to mistakes and misconduct, there are differences in their impact between high status and low status researchers. Retractions due to mistakes have a greater impact on low status researchers than high status researchers (about a 9.7% reduction in citations for low status researchers, but a 7.9% reduction for high status researchers). However, retractions due to misconduct have a much larger impact on high status researchers (19.1% reduction in citations) than on low status researchers (10% reduction).

Across all their results, the impacts on research funding follow a similar pattern. Junior researchers face greater career penalties for mistakes, but senior researchers face greater penalties for serious misconduct. However, since their sample was limited to researchers who were still employed after the retraction, their results may be biased if junior researchers are more likely to exit the profession than senior researchers, in response to a retraction (or before the retraction). Perhaps junior researchers whose careers would be most negatively affected are most likely to exit? Some additional work in this area is definitely warranted.

Despite that caveat, the overall story is somewhat comforting. The research community does punish researchers for their malpractices, and more severely than for genuine mistakes. However, in order for that process to be effective, the community needs to know the circumstances surrounding each retraction. Indeed, Azoulay et al. conclude that:

...the results highlight the importance of transparency in the retraction process itself. Retraction notices often obfuscate the difference between instances of “honest mistake” and scientific misconduct in order to avoid litigation risk or more rigorous fact-finding responsibilities. In spite of this garbled information, our study reveals that the content and context of retraction events influences their fallout.