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Just to return to this great tweet thread for a second -- the other problem with retractions is that articles will often keep being cited, even after all of this work to get them retracted in the first place (1/7)
A recent article in Scientometrics, for example, found that not only do retracted articles keep being cited, but they are often cited positively, despite clear notices of retraction (2/7) link.springer.com/article/10.100…
I actually don't think this is always authors' fault! Everyone should know not to cite Wakefield et al., of course, but journals don't really go out of their way to publicise retractions. (3/7)
So: I wrote a little #rstats📦to help (my first package ever!). It takes your @zotero library (or any BibTex file) and checks PubMed for any associated retractions, erratums, or expressions of concern. Details and download instructions are here! (4/7) github.com/imaddowzimet/f…
NOW A WHOLE BUNCH OF CAVEATS: 1) PubMed has incomplete records of retraction, and there's also often a time lag (see ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/P…). So you may miss recent retractions, or anything not posted to PubMed. (5/7)
2) @RetractionWatch has a much more complete database (retractiondatabase.org), but it doesn't have an API (yet), so you need to check references one by one. Once they add one, I can update the package to check their database as well. (6/7)
3) This is my first R package! So I'm sure of done some things in a silly or inefficient way; feedback welcome, on Twitter or on the associated Github page. And if someone has already done this already, also let me know! (/fin)
