Being a coauthor of a retracted paper should I mention it in my CV while applying for a PhD? I want to be transparent would it affect my PhD chances?

Question

During my Masters Thesis project I helped two of my batch mates with their project who worked in a different lab. It was related to analyzing micro-array datasets from NCBI deposited data. Since, I already had some experience in analyzing datasets I helped them in preparing a workflow and teaching them the background of the different tools and how it works and monitored them during initial phase of the work. But the work was not complete at the time of thesis submission. So, after submitting our thesis they continued their work and I didn't play much role in final part of their work. One day I got a mail from a journal that the work was going to be submitted and asked me to confirm that I am one of the coauthors of the paper. I was very happy at that time that I was given an Co-authorship(4th author). I didn't ask for the final version of the manuscript that was being submitted to proof-read for myself before submission which i regret a lot right now. Also I was not informed of the choice of journal that the manuscript was submitted. After publication, issues in the manuscript such as, tortured phrases and off topic journal were mentioned in pub-peer. Finally the paper was retracted.

I hate myself for not proof-reading the manuscript beforehand and not being critical voicing my concerns. It has been many months since then but i am at home afraid to apply for a PhD which is my dream. I understand that as a co-author I was short-sighted which i regret and such a thing would not have happened if I didn't have an easy going attitude.

I want to apply for a PhD abroad and it would be really helpful if someone could give me advice on how to mention the retraction in my CV and how to tackle this issue. Would it affect my chances of getting a PhD?

Answer 1

Being the author of a retracted paper certainly isn't going to help and has some likelihood of harming your chances. If you mention it expect long discussions about your participation, authorship, and the reasons for retraction.

Literally, after retraction, the paper doesn't exist in the scientific literature, so it seems ethical to omit mention of it (caveat below).

It might be, however, that your participation in the project gave you some important skills that might be worth mentioning.

Some retracted papers are different of course: those that result in actual harm. That is different from low quality of the research leaving results in doubt. Those harmful papers are difficult to escape whether you list them or not. You might, in that case, need to explain the lessons learned from the failure in order to advance a career, though that doesn't seem to be the case here.