35,000 papers in the biomedical literature might need retracting
Analysis of sample of journals suggests 0.4% of papers may have problematic images
A new analysis of the biomedical literature estimates that as many as 35,000 papers may be candidates for retraction due to inappropriate image duplication. The two-pronged analysis looked at 960 papers submitted from 2009–2016 to Molecular and Cellular Biology (MCB) and found that 6.1% of these contained inappropriately duplicated images. Of these, 10% were eventually retracted from MCB. A sample of 40 biomedical journals was also assessed and 4% appeared to have inappropriately duplicated images.