It has been a difficult year for scientific integrity. The problem of scientific misconduct is occupying a disappointingly increasing amount of time in the research world and has reached the lay press. Misconduct requires ever growing vigilance, scrutiny, and at times forensic investigation, on the part of journals, editors, reviewers, readers, misconduct sleuths, and academic institutions.

Periodically, gross malfeasance is discovered. It has happened again in our specialty. A special committee of the Japanese Society of Anesthesiologists (Kobe, Japan) recently found Dr. Hironobu Ueshima, a Japanese anesthesiologist, guilty of fabricating data and other misconduct in 142 publications (12 original papers, 9 case reports, 1 in related fields, and 120 letters).^1,2  To date, only six of these publications have been retracted. If all the 142 articles are ultimately retracted, Ueshima would become the third anesthesiologist with retractions numbering in the triple digits. He and two other anesthesiologists—Joachim Boldt and Yoshitaka Fujii—would sit atop the Retraction Watch leaderboard. Together they would be the three authors with the most retractions in science worldwide.³  This is an ignominious distinction for both these individuals and our specialty. Perioperative medicine has a dominant presence in scientific misconduct.⁴ 

Unfortunately, scientific misconduct is proliferating. Last year, worldwide, more than 2,300 articles were retracted, an increase from just 38 in 2000.⁵ This may, in part, represent greater scrutiny and reporting, and it is fortuitous that only four in 10,000 articles overall are retracted.⁶ However the number of problematic if not fraudulent articles is known to be much greater than the number of retractions,⁵ and retracted articles often continue to be read and cited long after their retraction.⁷