Women Authors Considerably Underrepresented in Retracted medical Research
GENEVA, Switzerland – A new study reveals a striking disparity in retractions within medical research: women’s names appear on just 23% of author slots in nearly 900 retracted articles published between 2008 and 2017. The research, published November 19 in PLoS ONE, suggests women may be less frequently associated with research leading to retraction, but the reasons remain complex.
The study, led by Paul Sebo, an internal medicine specialist and researcher at the University of Geneva, utilized an artificial intelligence tool to infer author gender based on first names. Findings showed women held 16.5% of first-author positions and 12.7% of last-author positions on retracted papers. This contrasts sharply with a previous analysis of all articles from the same journals and timeframe, which found women represented 41-45% of first authors and 26-33% of last authors.1
“this is a really interesting, creative and robust study,” says Curt Rice, who promotes publishing literacy at the Publishing Unlocked project in Oslo, Norway. “The article invites us to dig into issues like negotiations about authorship and the likelihood of scrutiny.”
While acknowledging the limitations of gender-prediction tools – including thier inability to account for non-binary identities and potential inaccuracies with non-Western names - Sebo conducted a manual check of 200 names and found no discrepancies.
In an email to Nature, Sebo theorized the disparity may be linked to women’s underrepresentation in senior academic roles and leadership of research projects. He suggests this could result in women being less exposed to the “kinds of responsibilities (and risks) that are more commonly associated with retractions.”
The findings add to existing data showing women are generally under-represented in medical research.2
1 Sebo, P. et al. PLoS ONE (2023).
2 nature. https://www.nature.com/articles/d43978-021-00132-4