Scientists in the United States are more likely to publish fake research than scientists elsewhere, according to a study published in the Journal of Medical Ethics that examined retracted studies. The study found scientists who commit research fraud are likely to do it again.

The study, using the PubMed database, found that a total of 788 papers had been retracted between 2000 and 2010. Of those, about three quarters had been retracted because of a serious error. The remaining retractions, though, came about because of fabricated data or falsification.

A third of the retracted papers–a total of 260–had U.S. researchers listed as the first authors. One third of these retractions came about because of fraud. Asian nations accounted for 30 percent of retractions, but fraud accounted for only one in four of those retractions.

The fakes were more likely to appear in leading publications with a high “impact factor.” This is a measure of how often research is cited in other peer reviewed journals. More than half (53 percent) of the faked research papers had been written by a first author who has committed such fraud more than once. This was the case in only one in five (18 percent) of the erroneous papers.

“This study reports evidence consistent with the ‘deliberate fraud’ hypothesis, concludes the author R. Grant Steen. “The results suggest that papers retracted because of data fabrication or falsification represent a calculated effort to deceive. It is inferred that such behavior is neither naïve, feckless nor inadvertent.”

The average number of authors on all retracted papers was three, but some had 10 or more. Faked research papers were significantly more likely to have multiple authors.
Each first author who was a repeat fraudster had an average of six co-authors, each of whom had had another three retractions.

“The duplicity of some authors is cause for concern,” says Steen. “Retraction is the strongest sanction that can be applied to published research, but currently, “[it] is a very blunt instrument used for offences both gravely serious and trivial.”