Retractions in dentistry: reasons, time to retraction and post-retraction citations

Introduction: Retraction is the principal mechanism for removing unreliable findings from the scientific record, and retractions have increased worldwide. Dentistry has received less systematic attention than medicine, particularly for time to retraction and post-retraction citations. Methods: Cross-sectional study of all records in the Retraction Watch database tagged as dentistry with a retraction date up to 2025. Reasons were described as recorded, time to retraction was computed in months, and post-retraction citations, defined as citations received in the year of retraction or later, were obtained from OpenAlex. Groups were compared with the Mann-Whitney and Kruskal-Wallis tests. Results: A total of 498 retracted dental publications were identified between 2002 and 2025. The most frequent reasons were investigation by the journal or publisher, unreliable results and concerns about data. Median time to retraction was 20 months and fell from 27.5 months in 2002-2019 to 17 months in 2020-2025. Of 447 publications matched in OpenAlex, 86.1% were cited at least once after retraction and 52.7% of all citations were received after retraction. Conclusions: Dental retractions are driven mainly by reliability and peer-review concerns, occur faster in recent years, and remain widely cited after retraction, which warrants clearer labeling of retracted status and reference checks before citation.