We analysed how long it has taken for papers authored by Scott Reuben, Joachim Boldt and Yoshitaka Fujii to be retracted: investigations into these three anaesthetists have shown much of their research to be unethical or fraudulent. To date, 94% of their combined papers requiring retraction have been retracted; however, only 85% of the retraction notices were compliant with guidelines produced by the Committee on Publication Ethics. We contacted the Editors-in-Chief and/or publishers of all the journals containing articles that had been identified as requiring retraction but had not yet been retracted. In response to our enquiries, 16 articles have since been retracted; we have documented the journals' responses regarding the remaining papers and await further retractions in the future. There is room for improvement in the way that unethical or fraudulent papers are handled by journals and publishers, beyond the identification of the authors' misconduct.
Keywords: data fabrication; error; fraud; randomised controlled trials.
© 2018 Association of Anaesthetists.