Yes that blue line is retractions in scientific journals. Dr Roger Pielke Jr. notes on his blog that:
The Wall Street Journal reports that retractions of scientific papers have surged in recent years, with the top 3 journals issuing retractions being PNAS, Science and Nature. The graph above shows the increase in the rate of retracted papers.
Pharmalot provides a summary:
[T]here were just 22 retraction notices that appeared in journals 10 years ago, but 139 were published in 2006 and by last year, the number reached 339. Through July of this year, there were a total 210 retractions, according to Thomson Reuters Web of Science, which maintains an index of 11,600 peer-reviewed journals.
Meanwhile, retractions related to fraud rose more than sevenfold between 2004 and 2009, exceeding a twofold rise traced to mistakes, according to an analysis published in the Journal of Medical Ethics. After studying 742 papers that were withdrawn from 2000 to 2010, the analysis found that 73.5 percent were retracted simply for error, but 26.6 percent were retracted for fraud. Ominously, 31.8 percent of retracted papers were not noted as retracted (read the abstract).
It should also be noted that there are more journals now than in 1977 and we have rapid publishing tools instead of a drafting table and a typewriter.
Read the rest here http://rogerpielkejr.blogspot.com/2011/08/surging-retractions-in-scientific.html
I wonder if the Monnett polar bear paper will become a new data point on the graph above? It certainly started out as one.
Given the rise of published papers it’s no wonder that the quality goes down. Of course, of the non-retracted papers, 95% will be junk nevertheless. Sturgeon’s Law applies. Well it was 95% in 1996, maybe it’s 98% now.
This is a naive observation. But,
COULD IPCC REPORT YEARS – 2001 & 2007 – BE RELATED TO THE INFLECTION POINTS?
Why those two years for a change in the steady low rise?
Ironically when it comes to the ‘Team’ retractions seem not to be an issue for, example Phil Jones infamous Chinese ‘the dog eat my home work’ UHI study , no sign of that being retracted . So although there would seem to be a lot being retracted that does not mean lots more should not be retracted given their ‘quality ‘
put them all behind bars and throw away the key
SorryOff topic ! but…You just HAVE to read this article the best summary ever!!
I really hope your translation from Swedish to English make enough sense. The article i written by Lars Bern who is a climate sceptic with his roots long in the enviromental mowement. One of the initiators to ” Det naturliga steget” (The natural step). His has a backround from top management with enviromental issues as speciality. All the individuals namned in the article are key scaremongers in sweden. His summary of what will be the consecvences of the “green agenda” is spot on. Its worth its one article Anthony !!
[Note: To make sure Anthony sees it, your link should be posted in Tips & Notes. And it would be helpful if it was in English. ~dbs, mod.]
http://www.newsmill.se/artikel/2011/08/12/klimatpolitiken-har-f-rv-rrat-skuldkrisen
huishi says:
August 12, 2011 at 2:37 pm
Nowhere close. I see bad mistakes in my field all the time. They’re easy to catch because it’s an operational science…just today one of my coworkers just couldn’t understand the results someone else got. I’m familiar with that area and everything made sense except one result (which was very important in the paper)…I ran the numbers on that result and you find that it’s physically impossible to be true. Yet somehow it got through review just fine…go figure. I’ve seen similar errors in the past. Heck, we once had a guy that had bad/falsified (take your pick, though I prefer falsified) data and tried to support it by pointing to a paper that had an obvious flaw…and the thing he was pointing to was the obvious flaw (he didn’t realize it was a flaw of course). When presented with at least a dozen other papers and even hard experimental evidence from the lab, he refused to back down…still left with a PhD though…go figure. As much as joke about the above, the number of papers from my lab that should probably be retracted ranges on the order of half a dozen or so…and other labs may be worse.
So the real question is – why don’t these retractions happen? And the answer is that most of them don’t matter! Often, things get superseded so fast that they’re not that important within even a few years, and by that point no one will care about a retraction or not (until someone uses that paper for a starting point, LOL). Also, to call out people for a retraction can be asking for pain in the realm of funding/proposals, and when it’s your own group, it’s basically suicidal. What stinks is when this is in the area of measurement science, when one published wrong result can keep better stuff from getting published (at least in appropriate journals) because the wrong results “appears” better than the actual, good result.
-Scott
Given Pielke’s long obsession with climate science, I am curious as to why he has ignored it on this occasion.
How hard would it be to filter out the non-climate science papers ? Other studies have succeeded in doing so, why not this one ?
Roger, we all know you want to call climate science into question, so why didn’t you ?
I wonder if this number tracks closely to the number of PHDs issued. With more competition comes a higher likelihood of someone publishing anything to try and get ahead.
Sorry if this has already been covered in above comments. But I hope that someone is keeping records and copies of the published propaganda, as with the increasing rate of the collaspe of the ‘green scam’ the evidence will be retracted and may become difficult to access. Kind of like deleting emails. The whole ‘green scheme’ is really nasty and the players seem to show no remorse for their actions. Sad.
Only 1/3 of 1%, but should be 1/3 of 100%. Mostly “climate science”.
Paging Al Gore: time to go short on climate. Sell, sell, sell!
A bit of perspective here. The current figure for retractions is 35 per 100,000 papers or 0.035%. Compare that to errors in other professions or product faults.
Although the link does not specify, it appears that these results are consistent with what has been known for a very long time. That retractions and fraud occur most often in Biomedical Journals. As with the Lancet MMR retraction, and the fraud perpetrated by William McBride on the effects of drugs on birth defects, many of these studies are authored by medical practitioners dabbling in science. There is also the perennial problem of studies carried out or financed by drug companies on their own products.
The fact is almost all retractions are made at the request of authors discovering their error, or in the case of fraud, by discoveries in house or by other scientists contacting the institutions involved who notify the publishers.
The link also stetes
It’s unclear whether the actual amount of misconduct and legitimate error has grown; it may just be that we’re picking up on more of it,” he continues.
Check the right hand scale people.
These science rag retractions have nearly caught up to CO2 in parts-per-million!
350 vs 392.
But the real question then is… has Nature been a net source or net sink? 🙂
Taking into account the different types of scales used, this is nothing to worry about. The appearance of the graph is far more alarming than the actual data it discloses. Of far greater concern to me is the zero percent retractions back in the 1980’s.
Making no particular point of it, I found the following interesting assertions on the net: 1)”Very few journals use more than two reviewers, the only journals I know of that regularly use more than two are Nature and Science (they use four or five) ”
2)”Science and Nature declined to publish the results of Lauterbur, the inventor of MRI, who later won the Nobel Prize for it.”
No, on second thought, this graph IS alarming. With statistical significance rated at 95 %, probability alone tells us we ought to be getting 500 redactions per ten thousand papers. Admittedly many will have significance over 95%, but there must also be allowances for error and fraud. The graph is alarming, but not in the way it seems intended to be.
Interesting. In light of WUWT’s recent coverage of the ivory tower and its publications (for example, the recent grad student’s coral reef article, one might be inclined to increase one’s skepticism about “studies”.
Another chart shows the percent of bad papers out of the total number published each year. That too is growing.
http://pmretract.heroku.com/byyear
With all those tens of thousands of journals out there, you’d think at least one of them would publish my “Unprecedented global warming driving calamitous rise in road kill” study.
oops. Guess that lead graph showed a percentage. Nevermind.
Philip Shehan says: August 12, 2011 at 9:51 pm
Thanks for that comment. And other commentators.
My interest in this is the effects of and distortion resulting from [social] policy.
From these posters on Jo Novas site and link from Rafe Champion’s comment (#16)
http://joannenova.com.au/2011/08/we-reclaimed-the-word-skeptic-next-we-reclaim-scientist/#more-16452
further studies have been posted:
Academic Fraud & Illegitimacy BS Frey & CREMA (Switzerland)
http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/economics/news/events/frey.pdf
(though P31 titled 2002-2005 ….2.212 scientists provided complete responses’
This should include the description of the sampling method + total sampled to meaningful to reader.
and this earlier article (April 2006)
http://economistsview.typepad.com/economistsview/2006/04/scientific_frau.html
RE: Yes that blue line is retractions in scientific journals.
There you have it, increases in CO2 cause increases in retractions. 😉
AS has already been pointed out, this is 0.035% of all papers – basically “an insignificant trace”, as some people would call it.
Also, looking at the original data, it would appear that it is based on an analysis of MEDICAL publications, and so says nothing, either positive of negative, about climate science.
Also, the phrase “peer reviewed” is much misused and misunderstood. It should not refer just to the process of getting a paper published in the first place – that is actually just the first step in peer review, which begins in its true sense after publication when other scientists in the same field will read and comment on the published paper. This commentary will sometimes reveal errors leading to correction, amendment or sometimes even withdrawal of the original paper. It is possible that what this article shows is that the peer review process is actually working.
30 to 35 papers retracted for every 100,000 published. Of the retracted papers, some 26% were withdrawn for fraud, meaning 8 or 9 papers out of 100,000 are shown to be fraudulent.
I think we all know why Mssrs. Watts and Pielke and the WSJ are flogging this dead horse.
The only climate science related retraction that’s listed on “Retraction Watch” is … Wegman 2008.
http://retractionwatch.wordpress.com/2011/05/17/controversial-paper-critiquing-climate-change-science-set-to-be-retracted-because-of-plagiarism/
Only one climate science related retraction – the “Wegman Report”, and that’s a paper the so-called “skeptics” used as proof that climate scientists colluded in their studies. The report has become a touchstone among climate change naysayers, and now it’s been retracted. Well, well, well.
What an inconvenient fact, Lone Ranger.