56.3% of citations in meta-analyses still treat a retracted paper as support.
Systematic reviews: 54.4%. Reviews: 51.2%. Research articles: 36.1%.
Treated it as support, by type of citing paper
Why it matters. Meta-analyses, systematic reviews and reviews are what doctors and guideline panels read when they decide on care, and they lean on retracted work most.
Each bar is the share of that type's citations made after the retraction; the type is the citing paper's, not the retracted paper's.
Source: SaneCite Phase 2 census: 51,626 citations from open-access papers citing retracted biomedical papers (PubMed-indexed, retracted 1990–2023). Read by three AI models; pending human review. Data as of 14 Oct 2026.
Source: SaneCite Phase 2 census, 51,626 citations, data as of 14 Oct 2026 · sanecite.com/charts
Show the numbers
| Citing paper | Citations | Cited as support | Flagged as retracted |
|---|---|---|---|
| research article | 33,648 | 12,150 (36.1%) | 817 (2.4%) |
| review | 14,243 | 7,286 (51.2%) | 588 (4.1%) |
| clinical trial | 1,117 | 397 (35.5%) | 30 (2.7%) |
| meta-analysis | 865 | 487 (56.3%) | 84 (9.7%) |
| case report | 660 | 241 (36.5%) | 7 (1.1%) |
| systematic review | 660 | 359 (54.4%) | 58 (8.8%) |
| letter, editorial or comment | 399 | 99 (24.8%) | 141 (35.3%) |
| guideline | 30 | 16 (53.3%) | 0 (0.0%) |
| other | 4 | 2 (50.0%) | 1 (25.0%) |
Types as Europe PMC records them. Guidelines (30 citations) and other types (4) are too few to show as bars.
Free to share, with credit.
Download the image, paste the caption, or link to this page. Please credit SaneCite (sanecite.com). The numbers come from the open census data; nothing here is picked by hand.
- How it was read.Three AI models read every citing passage. On a blind sample of 150 citations they agreed with a separate AI reader on whether each cited the paper as support in 142 (94.7%). The rates are not corrected for reader error: corrected using that AI reader's checks, the 40.7% headline estimate is 38.1% (95% CI 33.5–41.8%).
- What a citation is here.One later paper citing one retracted paper, in a year after the retraction. Citations to paperwork retractions, which find no fault in the science, are reported apart.
- What it covers.Open-access papers in Europe PMC citing PubMed-indexed papers retracted from 1990 to 2023. About 43% of all later citations could be read.
- Check it yourself.This chart's data · every citation, searchable · method and limits · code.