The Career Effects of Scandal: Evidence from Scientific Retractions

Pierre Azoulay, Alessandro Bonatti and Joshua L. Krieger

No 21146, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: We investigate how the scientific community's perception of a scientist's prior work changes when one of his articles is retracted. Relative to non-retracted control authors, faculty members who experience a retraction see the citation rate to their earlier, non-retracted articles drop by 10% on average, consistent with the Bayesian intuition that the market inferred their work was mediocre all along. We then investigate whether the eminence of the retracted author and the cause of the retraction (fraud vs. mistake) shape the magnitude of the penalty. We find that eminent scientists are more harshly penalized than their less distinguished peers in the wake of a retraction, but only in cases involving fraud or misconduct. When the retraction event had its source in “honest mistakes,” we find no evidence of differential stigma between high- and low-status faculty members.

JEL-codes: O31 O33 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015-05
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-exp, nep-hpe, nep-lma and nep-sog
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (11)

Published as Pierre Azoulay & Alessandro Bonatti & Joshua L. Krieger, 2017. "The career effects of scandal: Evidence from scientific retractions," Research Policy, .

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