Big pharma, bad science? An analysis of retractions in bio-medical journals

Dr Bastian Rake presented his paper “Big pharma, bad science? An analysis of retractions in bio-medical journals” at the 79th Annual Meeting of the Academy of Management in Boston, Massachusetts, USA. In this paper, Dr Rake studies how many bio-medical articles authored by firm researchers or sponsored by firms are removed from the academic literature and why they are removed. The empirical analysis reveals that removing firm articles from the academic literature is a rather rare event. However, if firm articles are removed it is often due to data manipulation and questionable research practices.

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