Comparison of articles for which retraction was explained as the result of fabrication or falsification (‘fraud’) versus articles for which retraction was explained as the result of any other cause (‘error’)
| Fraudulent papers | Erroneous papers | χ2 or t value | p Value | |||
| Mean | SD | Mean | SD | |||
| Sample (n) | 197 | – | 545 | – | – | – |
| Journal impact factor | 8.99 | 10.24 | 6.29 | 8.52 | 3.595 | <0.001 |
| Repeat offenders, n (%) | 105 (53.3) | – | 100 (18.4) | – | 88.403 | <0.0001 |
| No of authors per paper | 5.82 | 3.63 | 4.86 | 3.13 | 3.529 | <0.001 |
| Months to retraction | 28.41 | 22.87 | 22.72 | 20.84 | 3.193 | <0.005 |