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Comment by dsplittgerber | Hacker News Reader

The source says that 33% of withdrawn papers by US first authors were attributed to fraud, while only 25% of withdrawn papers by Asian first authors were attributed to it. So, US first authors are - comparing race cohorts - more likely to publish fake results, are they not (disregarding the fact that there is no possible measure of how likely it is to get caught)?

I agree, though, that the finding is pretty much useless.

Great article in The Atlantic btw - "Lies, damned lies, and medical science" http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2010/11/lies-dam...

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33% of retracted papers were from the US.

30% of retracted papers were from "Asian nations".

The UK, India, China, and Japan each had over 5% of the retracted papers.

33% of retracted US papers were fraudulent. So 67% of their retracted papers were erroneous.

25% of retracted ... is this Asian, or UK/India/China/Japan? papers were fraudulent. So 75% of their retracted papers were erroneous.

How does the percentage of US papers that were retracted, compare the the percentages for other countries (it has number of retracted papers, but not number of non-retracted)? This is necessary to compare the overall percentages of fraudulent/erroneous papers; what I see in the article could mean that US researchers are less likely to make mistakes and equally (or less, even) likely to commit fraud; it doesn't necesasrily mean that US researchers commit more fraud (or make less mistakes).

The cohorts aren't defined by race though, or even ethnicity, are they? Someone born in china, raised in Brazil who did their undergrad in France and got their doctorate in India before publishing a fraudulent paper as a postdoc at UCSF is going to be counted agains the US, right?

On another front though, what's the margin of error on the sample sizes used in the paper?

No - because the percentages are only for withdrawn papers. The likelihood of publishing fake results should be based on the total number of papers. If the US group had fewer withdrawn papers as a percentage of submitted papers then the 33% of withdrawn papers could amount to a smaller percentage of the total submitted than the Asians' 25%.

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