The career effects of scandal: Evidence from scientific retractions
Name
Azoulay_The career effects of scandal.pdf
Description
Accepted version
Size
834.95 KB
Format
Adobe PDF
Checksum (MD5)
0935de541f2e9e7b55c610097be32bff
Author(s)
Azoulay, Pierre
Bonatti, Alessandro
Krieger, Joshua L.
Date Issued
November 2017
Journal
Research Policy
Publisher
Elsevier BV
Citation
Azoulay, Pierre et al. "The career effects of scandal: Evidence from scientific retractions." Research Policy 46, 9 (November 2017): 1552-1569 © 2017 Elsevier B.V.
Version
Author's final manuscript
Abstract
We investigate how the scientific community's perception of a scientist's prior work changes when one of his articles is retracted. Relative to non-retracted control authors, faculty members who experience a retraction see the citation rate to their earlier, non-retracted articles drop by 10% on average, consistent with the Bayesian intuition that the market inferred their work was mediocre all along. We then investigate whether the eminence of the retracted author and the cause of the retraction (fraud vs. mistake) shape the magnitude of the penalty. We find that eminent scientists are more harshly penalized than their less distinguished peers in the wake of a retraction, but only in cases involving fraud or misconduct. When the retraction event had its source in “honest mistakes,” we find no evidence of differential stigma between high- and low-status faculty members.
MIT Department
Sloan School of Management
Terms of Use
Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs License
Persistent DSpace Link
DOI of Published Version
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.respol.2017.07.003
