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Retraction

Definition

A formal withdrawal of a published article by a journal or its authors, issued when the findings can no longer be trusted or the work was not properly authorised.

Related terms

Fabrication
Inventing data or results that were never actually collected, so the reported study never took place.
Falsification
Manipulating research materials, equipment or processes, or changing or omitting data, so that the record no longer accurately reflects what happened.
HARKing
Hypothesising after the results are known: presenting a hypothesis formed after seeing the data as though it had been predicted in advance.
P-Hacking
Trying multiple analytic choices on the same dataset until one combination crosses a statistical significance threshold, then reporting only that combination as...
Plagiarism
Presenting another person's words, ideas, data or findings as one's own without adequate credit, including copying one's own previously published work without...
Pre-Registration
Filing a study's hypotheses, sample size and planned analysis in a public registry before collecting or examining outcome data.
Questionable Research Practices
Practices such as p-hacking, HARKing and salami slicing that distort what a study appears to show without meeting the FFP definition of...

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