Assessment of Citations of the Retracted Article by Wakefield et al With Fraudulent Claims of an Association Between Vaccination and Autism

Key Points Question What are the characteristics of citations of the retracted 1998 article by Wakefield et al that purported to show an association between the measles-mumps-rubella vaccine and autism? Findings In this cross-sectional bibliographic analysis of 1153 works citing the article by Wakefield et al, citation characteristics were mostly negative, but since the notice of retraction was issued in 2010, many of the citing works published afterward did not indicate that the article was retracted. Meaning The findings suggest that improvements are needed from publishers, bibliographic databases, and citation management software to ensure that retracted articles are accurately documented.