IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/respol/v48y2019i2p444-461.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Pathogenic organization in science: Division of labor and retractions

Author

Listed:
  • Walsh, John P.
  • Lee, You-Na
  • Tang, Li

Abstract

Science is increasingly a team activity, and the size of the teams has been growing. At the same time, there are concerns about an increasing rate of pathologies in science. The growth of team science suggests the need to look beyond individual-level explanations and focus on organizational structures and institutional contexts to explain pathologies in science. Drawing on the literature on organizational pathologies, we argue that division of labor may be a key factor contributing to pathologies in science. Furthermore, we examine the effects of high-stakes incentives and of institutional corruption as additional predictors of scientific pathologies. Using retractions as an indicator of pathologies, and drawing on a matched sample of 195 retracted papers and 349 paired papers that were not retracted, we develop indicators of the division of labor in the team that produced a paper and find that the rate of retractions is higher as the division of labor increases (net of team size). Additionally, we find that high-stakes incentives and institutional corruption are also associated with increased retractions. We conclude with a discussion of the implications of these findings for science policy, in particular for organizing team science projects.

Suggested Citation

  • Walsh, John P. & Lee, You-Na & Tang, Li, 2019. "Pathogenic organization in science: Division of labor and retractions," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 48(2), pages 444-461.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:respol:v:48:y:2019:i:2:p:444-461
    DOI: 10.1016/j.respol.2018.09.004
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0048733318302129
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.respol.2018.09.004?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Benjamin F. Jones, 2009. "The Burden of Knowledge and the "Death of the Renaissance Man": Is Innovation Getting Harder?," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 76(1), pages 283-317.
    2. Bill Harley & Dries Faems & Andrew Corbett, 2014. "A Few Bad Apples or the Tip of an Iceberg? Academic Misconduct in Publishing," Journal of Management Studies, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 51(8), pages 1361-1363, December.
    3. Nicola Lacetera & Lorenzo Zirulia, 2011. "The Economics of Scientific Misconduct," The Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization, Oxford University Press, vol. 27(3), pages 568-603.
    4. Azoulay, Pierre & Bonatti, Alessandro & Krieger, Joshua L., 2017. "The career effects of scandal: Evidence from scientific retractions," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 46(9), pages 1552-1569.
    5. Necker, Sarah, 2014. "Scientific misbehavior in economics," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 43(10), pages 1747-1759.
    6. Walsh, John P. & Lee, You-Na, 2015. "The bureaucratization of science," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 44(8), pages 1584-1600.
    7. Charles H. Davis & Blaise Cronin, 1993. "Acknowledgments and intellectual indebtedness: A bibliometric conjecture," Journal of the American Society for Information Science, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 44(10), pages 590-592, December.
    8. Philippe Mongeon & Vincent Larivière, 2016. "Costly collaborations: The impact of scientific fraud on co-authors' careers," Journal of the Association for Information Science & Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 67(3), pages 535-542, March.
    9. Smith, Adam, 1776. "An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations," History of Economic Thought Books, McMaster University Archive for the History of Economic Thought, number smith1776.
    10. Benson Honig & Joseph Lampel & Donald Siegel & Paul Drnevich, 2014. "Ethics in the Production and Dissemination of Management Research: Institutional Failure or Individual Fallibility?," Journal of Management Studies, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 51(1), pages 118-142, January.
    11. Wagner, Caroline S. & Leydesdorff, Loet, 2005. "Network structure, self-organization, and the growth of international collaboration in science," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 34(10), pages 1608-1618, December.
    12. Ginger Zhe Jin & Benjamin Jones & Susan Feng Lu & Brian Uzzi, 2013. "The Reverse Matthew Effect: Catastrophe and Consequence in Scientific Teams," NBER Working Papers 19489, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    13. Corrêa Jr., Edilson A. & Silva, Filipi N. & da F. Costa, Luciano & Amancio, Diego R., 2017. "Patterns of authors contribution in scientific manuscripts," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 11(2), pages 498-510.
    14. Li Tang & Philip Shapira & Jan Youtie, 2015. "Is there a clubbing effect underlying Chinese research citation Increases?," Journal of the Association for Information Science & Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 66(9), pages 1923-1932, September.
    15. Carolin Haeussler & Henry Sauermann, 2016. "The Division of Labor in Teams: A Conceptual Framework and Application to Collaborations in Science," NBER Working Papers 22241, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    16. Nagaoka, Sadao & Owan, Hideo, 2014. "Author ordering in scientific research: evidence from scientists survey in the US and Japan," IIR Working Paper 13-23, Institute of Innovation Research, Hitotsubashi University.
    17. Lee, You-Na & Walsh, John P. & Wang, Jian, 2015. "Creativity in scientific teams: Unpacking novelty and impact," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 44(3), pages 684-697.
    18. Daniele Fanelli, 2009. "How Many Scientists Fabricate and Falsify Research? A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis of Survey Data," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 4(5), pages 1-11, May.
    19. Belot, Michèle & Schröder, Marina, 2013. "Sloppy work, lies and theft: A novel experimental design to study counterproductive behaviour," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 93(C), pages 233-238.
    20. Furman, Jeffrey L. & Jensen, Kyle & Murray, Fiona, 2012. "Governing knowledge in the scientific community: Exploring the role of retractions in biomedicine," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 41(2), pages 276-290.
    21. Alan L. Porter & Ismael Rafols, 2009. "Is science becoming more interdisciplinary? Measuring and mapping six research fields over time," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 81(3), pages 719-745, December.
    22. Weishu Liu & Guangyuan Hu & Mengdi Gu, 2016. "The probability of publishing in first-quartile journals," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 106(3), pages 1273-1276, March.
    23. Shibayama, Sotaro & Baba, Yasunori & Walsh, John P., 2015. "Organizational design of University laboratories: Task allocation and lab performance in Japanese bioscience laboratories," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 44(3), pages 610-622.
    24. Salandra, Rossella, 2018. "Knowledge dissemination in clinical trials: Exploring influences of institutional support and type of innovation on selective reporting," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 47(7), pages 1215-1228.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Anna Adamik & Michał Nowicki, 2019. "Pathologies and Paradoxes of Co-Creation: A Contribution to the Discussion about Corporate Social Responsibility in Building a Competitive Advantage in the Age of Industry 4.0," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 11(18), pages 1-38, September.
    2. Yuxian Liu & Yishan Wu & Sandra Rousseau & Ronald Rousseau, 2020. "Reflections on and a short review of the science of team science," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 125(2), pages 937-950, November.
    3. Weishu Liu & Li Tang & Guangyuan Hu, 2020. "Funding information in Web of Science: an updated overview," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 122(3), pages 1509-1524, March.
    4. Kwon, Seokbeom, 2022. "Interdisciplinary knowledge integration as a unique knowledge source for technology development and the role of funding allocation," Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Elsevier, vol. 181(C).
    5. Hu, Guangyuan & Ni, Rong & Tang, Li, 2022. "Do international nonstop flights foster influential research? Evidence from Sino-US scientific collaboration," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 16(4).
    6. Haeussler, Carolin & Sauermann, Henry, 2020. "Division of labor in collaborative knowledge production: The role of team size and interdisciplinarity," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 49(6).
    7. Salim Moussa, 2022. "The propagation of error: retracted articles in marketing and their citations," Italian Journal of Marketing, Springer, vol. 2022(1), pages 11-36, March.
    8. Weishu Liu, 2019. "The data source of this study is Web of Science Core Collection? Not enough," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 121(3), pages 1815-1824, December.
    9. Schaeffer, Véronique, 2019. "The use of material transfer agreements in academia: A threat to open science or a cooperation tool?," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 48(9), pages 1-1.
    10. Krammer, Sorin M.S. & Belkouja, Mustapha & Yoon, David, 2019. "Research performance of teams in Business and Management: The impact of team size, knowledge diversity and international diversity," MPRA Paper 104548, University Library of Munich, Germany, revised 06 Jun 2019.
    11. Hamid Bouabid & Hind Achachi, 2022. "Size of science team at university and internal co-publications: science policy implications," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 127(12), pages 6993-7013, December.
    12. Horton, Joanne & Krishna Kumar, Dhanya & Wood, Anthony, 2020. "Detecting academic fraud using Benford law: The case of Professor James Hunton," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 49(8).
    13. Hanukov, Gabi, 2022. "A service system where junior servers approach a senior server on behalf of customers," International Journal of Production Economics, Elsevier, vol. 244(C).

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Haeussler, Carolin & Sauermann, Henry, 2020. "Division of labor in collaborative knowledge production: The role of team size and interdisciplinarity," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 49(6).
    2. Horton, Joanne & Krishna Kumar, Dhanya & Wood, Anthony, 2020. "Detecting academic fraud using Benford law: The case of Professor James Hunton," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 49(8).
    3. Salandra, Rossella, 2018. "Knowledge dissemination in clinical trials: Exploring influences of institutional support and type of innovation on selective reporting," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 47(7), pages 1215-1228.
    4. Hussinger, Katrin & Pellens, Maikel, 2019. "Guilt by association: How scientific misconduct harms prior collaborators," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 48(2), pages 516-530.
    5. Gilles Grolleau & Naoufel Mzoughi, 2022. "How research institutions can make the best of scandals – once they become unavoidable," Post-Print hal-03908837, HAL.
    6. Lingzi Feng & Junpeng Yuan & Liying Yang, 2020. "An observation framework for retracted publications in multiple dimensions," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 125(2), pages 1445-1457, November.
    7. Gary A. Hoover & Christian Hopp, 2017. "What Crisis? Taking Stock of Management Researchers' Experiences with and Views of Scholarly Misconduct," CESifo Working Paper Series 6611, CESifo.
    8. Salandra, Rossella & Criscuolo, Paola & Salter, Ammon, 2021. "Directing scientists away from potentially biased publications: the role of systematic reviews in health care," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 50(1).
    9. Caroline Lievore & Priscila Rubbo & Celso Biynkievycz Santos & Claudia Tânia Picinin & Luiz Alberto Pilatti, 2021. "Research ethics: a profile of retractions from world class universities," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 126(8), pages 6871-6889, August.
    10. Jeremy Hall & Ben R. Martin, 2019. "Towards a Taxonomy of Academic Misconduct: The Case of Business School Research," SPRU Working Paper Series 2019-02, SPRU - Science Policy Research Unit, University of Sussex Business School.
    11. Carolin Haeussler & Henry Sauermann, 2016. "The Division of Labor in Teams: A Conceptual Framework and Application to Collaborations in Science," NBER Working Papers 22241, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    12. Banal-Estañol, Albert & Macho-Stadler, Inés & Pérez-Castrillo, David, 2019. "Evaluation in research funding agencies: Are structurally diverse teams biased against?," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 48(7), pages 1823-1840.
    13. Dongqing Lyu & Kaile Gong & Xuanmin Ruan & Ying Cheng & Jiang Li, 2021. "Does research collaboration influence the “disruption” of articles? Evidence from neurosciences," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 126(1), pages 287-303, January.
    14. Xu, Haifeng & Ding, Yi & Zhang, Cheng & Tan, Bernard C.Y., 2023. "Too official to be effective: An empirical examination of unofficial information channel and continued use of retracted articles," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 52(7).
    15. Hall, Jeremy & Martin, Ben R., 2019. "Towards a taxonomy of research misconduct: The case of business school research," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 48(2), pages 414-427.
    16. Azoulay, Pierre & Bonatti, Alessandro & Krieger, Joshua L., 2017. "The career effects of scandal: Evidence from scientific retractions," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 46(9), pages 1552-1569.
    17. Yulin Yu & Daniel M. Romero, 2024. "Does the Use of Unusual Combinations of Datasets Contribute to Greater Scientific Impact?," Papers 2402.05024, arXiv.org, revised Feb 2024.
    18. Tariq Ahmad Shah & Sumeer Gul & Saimah Bashir & Suhail Ahmad & Assumpció Huertas & Andrea Oliveira & Farzana Gulzar & Ashaq Hussain Najar & Kanu Chakraborty, 2021. "Influence of accessibility (open and toll-based) of scholarly publications on retractions," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 126(6), pages 4589-4606, June.
    19. Rossello, Giulia & Martinelli, Arianna, 2023. "Breach of academic values and digital deviant behaviour: The case of Sci-Hub," MERIT Working Papers 2023-009, United Nations University - Maastricht Economic and Social Research Institute on Innovation and Technology (MERIT).
    20. Liyin Zhang & Yuchen Qian & Chao Ma & Jiang Li, 2023. "Continued collaboration shortens the transition period of scientists who move to another institution," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 128(3), pages 1765-1784, March.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:respol:v:48:y:2019:i:2:p:444-461. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/respol .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.