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I looked at https://retractionwatch.com/the-retraction-watch-leaderboard/ and see that out of the top 10 researchers ranked by number of paper retractions, half are Japanese. Why?

E.g, are there factors in the Japanese research system that make researchers more inclined to publish questionable papers or retract imperfect papers? Is there a higher level of scrutiny on publications? Etc.

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  • 3
    Perhaps communities using retraction watch are more likely to include more Japanese?
    – Jon Custer
    Commented Jul 27 at 23:34
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    Relevant Retraction Watch post: retractionwatch.com/2018/10/24/…
    – Anyon
    Commented Jul 28 at 0:00
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    It also seems that Japanese researchers are at the forefront of projects like Retraction Watch. Toshio Kuroki wrote a book Research Misconduct and said this: "In Japan, we were so naïve in research misconduct, allowing such terrible cases... After the STAP affair, science communities as well as the public in Japan are more aware of this problem, which we hope will result in a reduction in misconduct."
    – Daniel R. Collins
    Commented Jul 28 at 0:54
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    Skimming the list, it seems that you're getting some double counting since #2 and #9 were frequent coauthors, as were #4 and #6. Also, the main common feature among the top 10 isn't that they're Japanese, it's that they're almost all medical researchers. Medical research has by far the highest retraction rate of any part of science.
    – knzhou
    Commented Jul 28 at 2:47
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    I'll note that your sample is small.
    – Buffy
    Commented Jul 29 at 19:03

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