Retraction Watch

Summary

Retraction Watch is a blog and database that tracks retractions of scientific papers and other issues of research integrity, providing transparency about errors, fraud, and misconduct in academic publishing. It serves as a critical resource for understanding the scale and nature of problems in scientific literature, including paper mills and reproducibility failures. The site maintains a searchable database of over 45,000 retracted papers.

Key Points

• •Tracks and reports on scientific paper retractions across all disciplines, exposing fraud, errors, and misconduct in peer-reviewed literature
• •Maintains a large searchable retraction database, enabling researchers to identify problematic papers and authors
• •Covers paper mills—organized operations that produce fraudulent research for pay—highlighting systemic threats to scientific integrity
• •Relevant to AI safety as it documents reliability issues in the scientific evidence base that AI systems are trained on or cite
• •Illustrates broader replication crisis concerns that affect trust in empirical research, including AI and ML benchmark studies