Since we're on the topic of bad science, the first figure in that article (Pants on Fire) is a pretty bad one. The units on the Y-axis are not specified (strike

Since we're on the topic of bad science, the first figure in that article (Pants on Fire) is a pretty bad one. The units on the Y-axis are not specified (strike one), but it looks to be the _unnormalized_ number of papers retracted each year. The yearly retraction _rate_ (i.e. the number of retracted paper per number of papers published) is what is relevant here. The number of journals have and papers have exploded since '96.