In an article for Nature, Richard Van Noorden and Miryam Naddaf highlight the projects led by Guillaume Cabanac (Université de Toulouse) and Nicholas DeVito (University of Oxford) to identify papers that are built on retracted research. Cabanac designed the Feet of Clay Detector tool, which he has used to flag over 1,700 papers that rely on retracted work. DeVito led the design of RetractoBot, which automatically notifies authors by email when a paper they have cited is retracted. Both Cabanac and DeVito noted that while many authors are grateful to be notified when the work they cite is retracted, some feel that they are unnecessarily casting criticisms and doubts onto their research. “We are merely trying to provide a service to the community to reduce this practice from happening,” said DeVito.
