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data. Placing preliminary results (that are later found to be wrong) in the
arXiv may even lead to giving credit to scientists who do not deserve
this. Conrad concluded that academic metrics need to be devised that dis-
tinguish citations of discredited claims so that it is not more advantageous
to state and retract a result than to make a solid discovery. He notes that
competition between universities, journals and scientists may lead to it
being better to be first but wrong, than scooped but right.
Fanelli (2014) wrote that the rise in retractions over the past years
does not signify a surge in misconduct. On the contrary, retractions
should be interpreted as evidence for the commitment of editors and
scientists to remove invalid results from the literature. As such it reflects
growing scientific integrity. Too many academics and journalists conflate
retractions with the falsification of results. Moreover, despite growing
pressures on scientists, retractions account for less than 0.02% of annual
publications. In another comment, Fanelli (2016) proposes the notion of
self-retraction as a neutral term for honest retraction and simply defined as a
retraction note signed by all coauthors. Besides the terms correction and
retraction Ronald (2016) proposes the terms notice of concern and error
alert for self-reported amendments to articles that are less clear-cut.
Meanwhile, there are so many retractions for whatever reason (fraud
or error) that it is possible to study the consequences for—possibly inno-
cent—coauthors. Mongeon and Larivie `re (2014) found that retractions
generally have consequences for the career of coauthors mostly in terms
of scientific output. Consequences affect first authors more than others
and are, of course, much more important in cases of fraud than in cases of
error.

3.3.5 A Note on Irreproducibility

Failure to replicate does not necessarily prove that the original research is
fraudulent or even unsound. A replication attempt may fail simply
because something was done differently. Indeed, there may be a lot of
procedural subtlety in the original research, which is not conveyed in the
journal article. Moreover, scientists sometimes do this deliberately in
order to be certain that those using their results make contact with them
and their original contribution is recognized as such. Of course, this too
is a form of unethical behavior.
We end this chapter and this section on scientific misconduct by the
following observation. In a discussion on the work on cell-induced stress