SGEM Xtra: On the Boulevard of Broken Dreams – Citation Errors in the Biomedical Literature

Trials extracted from the podcast by Dr. Ken Milne

• 2023Burden of proof: combating inaccurate citation in biomedical literatureOtherInthe biomedical literature, amandatory citation integrity statementis proposed instead ofunchecked reference liststo curbinaccurate citation.
• 2021How accurate are citations of frequently cited papers in biomedical literature?OtherAcross 4535 articles citing 27 top-cited biomedical papers, author-verified review of 7438 citations found an inaccurate citation in 11-15% of articles.
• 2008Misquotation of a Commonly Referenced Hand Surgery StudyOtherIn154 English-language articles citing Knirk & Jupiter 1986,dual-reviewer rating against the original datafoundmisquotation in 63, mostly the 2 mm incongruity claim
• 2009How citation distortions create unfounded authority: analysis of a citation networkOtherIn 242 papers stating one beta amyloid claim, citation network analysis showed supportive data outciting critical data, creating unfounded authority
• 2017A 1980 Letter on the Risk of Opioid AddictionOtherIn 608 articles citing a five-sentence 1980 letter, dual independent review found 72.2% invoked it as evidence that addiction was rare, versus a median 11 citations for peer letters
• 2024Defensive scholarship: learning from academia's plagiarism crisisOtherInacademic medical publishing, this letter urges authors toverify every citation at sourceinstead oftrusting second-hand references, to preventmiscitation distorting guidelines.