In science, a research paper is often the final result of a process of hard work, perseverance, skills, and good ideas. Accurate communication of new research findings in the context of previous work stands at the core of the scientific process and progress, and scientific misconduct can have devastating effects on the scientific community and society. The October 2014 issue of the Journal of Cardiovascular Pharmacology published a paper by Liu et al on inward rectifier channel activation by zacopride and its impact on cardiac remodeling and function. The original source paper is as follows: Liu CF, Liu QH, Liu EL, Zhai XW, Zhang L, Luo TE, Zhang WF, Feng QL, Cui XL, Zhao ZQ, Cao JM, Wu BW. Activation of I_K1 channel by zacopride attenuates left ventricular remodeling in rats with myocardial infarction. J Cardiovasc Pharmacol. 2014;64:345–356. The reason why we refer this source in the text and not in the reference list is because we believe retracted papers should not appear in citation statistics. The paper was subsequently retracted in the March 2015 issue of the same journal for reasons of “flawed data representations” and the authors apologized for “making such serious and obvious mistakes in this article, which has the potential to mislead individuals working in the field.”¹ We take this case as a starting point for evaluating publication fraud and then suggest a number of actions that may improve its prevention.