Surgisphere: leads the list:
The most spectacular flameouts involved a pair of articles that appeared in two of the world’s most prestigious medical journals. Both The Lancet and The New England Journal of Medicine were forced to remove articles that relied on data from a questionable firm called Surgisphere, which refused to share its results with coauthors and the editors involved. (The Lancet also retracted and replaced an editorial it had published that had cited the ill-fated paper.) Before it was discredited, the paper in The Lancet had tremendous influence, leading to the suspension of clinical trials on hydroxychloroquine. A third, influential Surgisphere study was taken down from the SSRN server at the request of a coauthor. The withdrawal of the preprint, which was about potential benefits of the antiparasitic drug ivermection, received little fanfare, let alone a retraction notice.
Retraction Watch, “The Top Retractions of 2020” at The Scientist
Okay. Some say the signs were there all along.
One scientist asks, “Who will believe us again?
A better question is, maybe, why?