Doing the Right Thing: A Qualitative Investigation of Retractions Due to Unintentional Error.
Retractions solicited by authors following the discovery of an unintentional error-what we henceforth call a "self-retraction"-are a new phenomenon of growing importance, about which very little is known. Here we present results of a small qualitative study aimed at gaining preliminary insights about circumstances, motivations and beliefs that accompanied the experience of a self-retraction. We identified retraction notes that unambiguously reported an honest error and that had been published between the years 2010 and 2015. We limited our sample to retractions with at least one co-author based in the Netherlands, Belgium, United Kingdom, Germany or a Scandinavian country, and we invited these authors to a semi-structured interview. Fourteen authors accepted our invitation. Contrary to our initial assumptions, most of our interviewees had not originally intended to retract their paper. They had contacted the journal to request a correction and the decision to retract had been made by journal editors. All interviewees reported that having to retract their own publication made them concerned for their scientific reputation and career, often causing considerable stress and anxiety. Interviewees also encountered difficulties in communicating with the journal and recalled other procedural issues that had unnecessarily slowed down the process of self-retraction. Intriguingly, however, all interviewees reported how, contrary to their own expectations, the self-retraction had brought no damage to their reputation and in some cases had actually improved it. We also examined the ethical motivations that interviewees ascribed, retrospectively, to their actions and found that such motivations included a combination of moral and prudential (i.e. pragmatic) considerations. These preliminary results suggest that scientists would welcome innovations to facilitate the process of self-retraction.
Department of Philosophy, Ethics Institute, Utrecht University, Janskerkhof 13, room 0.03, 3512 BL, Utrecht, The Netherlands.
Mohammad
M
Hosseini
Department of Medical Ethics and Philosophy, Erasmus University Medical Center Rotterdam, Na 21.17, Postbus 2040, 3000 CA, Rotterdam, The Netherlands.
Medard
M
Hilhorst
Department of Medical Ethics and Philosophy, Erasmus University Medical Center Rotterdam, Na 21.17, Postbus 2040, 3000 CA, Rotterdam, The Netherlands.
Inez
I
de Beaufort
Meta-Research Innovation Center at Stanford (METRICS), Stanford University, 1070 Arastradero Road (office 321), Palo Alto, CA, 94304, USA. email@danielefanelli.com.
Daniele
D
Fanelli
D001007:Anxiety; D001290:Attitude; D001319:Authorship; D035843:Biomedical Research / Q000941:ethics*; D003142:Communication; D035081:Editorial Policies; D032984:Ethics, Research; D005060:Europe; D006801:Humans; D009014:Morals; D009042:Motivation; D011643:Publishing / Q000941:ethics; D012108:Research Personnel / Q000941:ethics*; D012180:Retraction of Publication as Topic; D015871:Scientific Misconduct / Q000523:psychology; D013315:Stress, Psychological; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires
Corrections; Error; Integrity; Misconduct; Moral reasoning; Retractions