At http://vitals.nbcnews.com/_news/2012/10/01/14172241-bioethicist-retractions-of-fraudulent-medical-articles-on-rise-why-thats-good-news?lite

Bioethicist: Retractions of fraudulent medical articles on rise - why that's good news

By Art Caplan, Ph.D.

Can you trust what biomedical researchers have to say about your health?

There are plenty of people out there who say no, including anti-vaccinators, mega vitamin proponents, lovers of non-Western medicine and those who see a pharmaceutical company plot behind every drug, device or genetically altered seed. Few of these skeptics have any sound evidence to offer on behalf of their distrust. Often their opposition is based more on ideology or politics than it is solid evidence for doubt.

But, that does not mean that biomedical science should ignore problems that do undermine public trust in what they have to say. One of the most important and disturbing is fraud.

A study published Monday in the very trustworthy journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences shows that fraud is a real problem in scientific publications.  This study is both a reason for concern and, ironically, a reason to trust what scientists and doctors say.

The study reviewed 2,047 retracted biomedical and life-science research articles dating back to 1973 and found that the biggest reason for their retraction wasn't honest error but fraud.  More than 40 percent of the retractions were due to the discovery of outright fraud and another 23 percent to plagiarism. The rate of retractions of published articles, while a tiny percentage of all papers published in biomedical journals — 2,000 out of tens of millions published in the past four decades -- is growing. The rate has jumped 10 fold in the past 37 years.   

It's an unsettling trend. A teeny number of fraudulent articles can do an enormous amount of harm. Prominent cases of fraud certainly and rightly make the public wonder about the credibility of biomedical claims. Why, however, does this study and its findings have a silver... ( more at http://vitals.nbcnews.com/_news/2012/10/01/14172241-bioethicist-retractions-of-fraudulent-medical-articles-on-rise-why-thats-good-news?lite )