Over the past decade, the number of medical journals that have issued retractions has climbed precipitously. Since 2001, the overall number of papers that were published in research journals increased 44 percent, but at the same time, the number of papers that were retracted climbed more than 15-fold, according to The Wall Street Journal, citing data from Thomson Reuters. Put another way, there 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.
