I have discussed the problem of retracted articles continuing to receive citations before. In the process, I've mentioned some limited circumstances in which I can accept that a retracted article will continue to be cited. For the most part, my usual line of thinking is that unless the retracted article in question is being cited either to address some theoretical or methodological concern with a particular research area or is otherwise being used as a cautionary tale of what not to do (especially from an ethical standpoint), I see no point in a retracted article maintaining zombie status, and yet that occurs far too often, as many of pointed out before.
Caitlin Bakker and Maria Zalm describe the problem and offer a summary of some solutions in their recent Retraction Watch article. As chair and member, respectively, of the NISO CREC Working Group their recommendations appear to be a step in the right direction. You can read their recommendations in more detail here. The bottom line is that retractions and expressions of concern need to be far more visible than they are currently.
And the urgency for making retractions and expressions of concern much more visible is quite salient today. Articles are almost always retracted for a reason: either their was some form of fraud involved or there was some noticeable incompetence that makes the results and conclusions one might draw from the work of questionable validity (to put it politely). When such work is cited without noting its retraction status, the citing authors are wittingly or unwittingly allowing a work that is no longer considered valid to maintain its air of false legitimacy. That can lead to us as professionals continuing to believe in and spread our equivalent of urban legends. And we have to recall that policy makers and attorneys use our work quite often, and not always for the public benefit. The recent Supreme Court case in which the plaintiffs challenged the FDA approval and safety of mifepristone for non-medical pregnancy termination using a retracted fraudulent study as the cornerstone of their argument. Although the Justices thankfully ruled on the side of those who want to keep mifepristone available, that outcome was not a foregone conclusion. We can think too of the damage done from a retracted paper that supposedly linked childhood vaccines to autism. We're decades removed from that retraction, and yet that discredited work is still the foundation for what has become a political movement that has set back progress on preventing dangerous communicable diseases. Although the stakes are usually considerably lower for many retracted articles, they all leave at least a few victims in their wake. Let's hope that these new guidelines, as well as the sort of databases created by Retraction Watch and others, make a difference. The fewer zombies we have in our respective sciences, the better.
