34.9% of citations still cite a retracted paper as support more than ten years later.
In the first two years after a retraction it is 43.6%. Only a few in a hundred ever flag the paper as retracted or unreliable.
Cited it as support, by years since the retraction
Years after retraction · small numbers = citations that year · tallest: 16,108 in year 1
- Cited it as support
- Mentioned it in passing
- Flagged it as retracted or unreliable
Each bar mixes papers retracted in different years. Recent retractions can only appear in the early bars, so part of the drop comes from which papers are old enough to count.
Bars mix papers retracted in different years: part of the drop is which papers are old enough to count.
Source: SaneCite Phase 2 census: 51,626 citations from open-access papers citing retracted biomedical papers (PubMed-indexed, retracted 1990–2023); the year bars show the 51,370 made within 20 years. Provisional: read by three AI models; a human check comes next. 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
| Years after | Citations | Cited it as support (95% CI, %) | Flagged it (95% CI, %) |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1–2 | 25,915 | 43.6% (42.6–44.4) | 2.7% (2.1–3.8) |
| 3–5 | 13,700 | 39.1% (38.0–40.2) | 3.4% (2.9–3.9) |
| 6–10 | 8,277 | 37.4% (35.9–39.0) | 3.8% (2.8–5.4) |
| 11+ | 3,734 | 34.9% (32.4–37.2) | 6.3% (3.2–12.0) |
Bars count citations made that many calendar years after the retraction year (citations in the retraction year itself are not counted). The 256 citations made 21 to 36 years after are in the table and the CSV, not drawn. 95% confidence intervals (the likely range) come from re-running the numbers 400 times, drawing whole retracted papers at random (a cluster bootstrap).
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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.
- Provisional.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%); a check by two human labellers comes next, and the figures may move. The rates are not corrected for reader error: corrected using that one AI reader's checks, the 40.7% headline estimate would be about 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.