Likelihood of False-Positive Results in High-Impact Journals Publishing Groundbreaking Research

Abstract

LETTER A recent editorial in this journal has brought retracted science to the fore and provided the “retraction index” as a novel measure of frequency of such articles (2). In their analysis using this measure, the authors found that the probability of retraction of an article published in a higher-impact journal is greater than that published in a lower-impact journal. This is intriguing and in accordance with data previously published on a retraction tracking website (http://pmretract.heroku.com). Here, we would like to point out that apart from various reasons outlined in the editorial, including higher readership and scrutiny, simple Bayesian logic also predicts that the articles published in high-impact journals stand a higher chance of incorporating false-positive results and thereby are more likely to be retracted.