Falsification, Fabrication, and Plagiarism: The Unholy Trinity of Scientific Writing

open access

...Between 2001 and 2010, the number of manuscripts accepted by listed medical journals increased by 44%. The number of retracted papers over the same period, however, went up 19-fold! It has been estimated that the majority of the retractions resulted from conscious misdemeanors rather than honest errors 1, 2. To what can we attribute this extraordinary increase in apparent malfeasance? .....