Abstract
Retractions occupy an ambiguous place in the scientific record. They may indicate error, misconduct, or failures of oversight, but they are also one of the few visible mechanisms through which science corrects itself. This tension is relevant for public health, where decisions often rely on published evidence. We used a Scopus-based author database linked to Retraction Watch records to describe retraction patterns among researchers from the WHO-EURO area countries in three Health Sciences fields: Clinical Medicine, Biomedical Research, and Public Health & Health Services. Authors were grouped by citation status, health science field, and country and analysed descriptively. Retractions were rare overall (0.56%) but unevenly distributed. In the WHO-EURO area, prevalence was higher in Biomedical Research (0.58%) and Clinical Medicine (0.58%) than in Public Health & Health Services (0.19%), and higher among highly cited authors (4.18%). Among all authors, the three countries in the WHO-EURO area, with at least 500 authors with ≥5 publications, that have more retractions in the three fields are: Kazakhstan (1.76%) in Clinical Medicine, Ireland (1.14%) in Biomedical Research, Russia (0.39%) in Public Health & Health Services; the three countries that have less retractions are Slovakia (0.07%) in Clinical Medicine, Slovenia with no retractions in Biomedical Research and Finland with no retractions in Public Health & Health Services. This talk will reflect on both the current prevalence of retractions in Europe and the implications of retractions for the trustworthiness of research among scientists and the general public.