Do male leading authors retract more articles than female leading authors?

Abstract

Scientific retractions reflect issues within the scientific record, arising from human error or misconduct. Although gender differences in retraction rates have been previously observed in various contexts, no comprehensive study has explored this issue across all fields of science. This study examines gender disparities in scientific misconduct or errors, specifically focusing on differences in retraction rates between male and female first authors in relation to their research productivity. Using a dataset comprising 11,622 retracted articles and 19,475,437 non-retracted articles from the Web of Science and Retraction Watch, we investigate gender differences in retraction rates from the perspectives of retraction reasons, subject fields, and countries. Our findings indicate that male first authors have higher retraction rates, particularly for scientific misconduct such as plagiarism, authorship disputes, ethical issues, duplication, and fabrication/falsification. No significant gender differences were found in retractions attributed to mistakes. Furthermore, male first authors experience significantly higher retraction rates in biomedical and health sciences, as well as in life and earth sciences, whereas female first authors have higher retraction rates in mathematics and computer science. Similar patterns are observed for corresponding authors. Understanding these gendered patterns of retraction may contribute to strategies aimed at reducing their prevalence.