There seems to be a large disparity between the paper retraction rates between different STEM fields. Pretty much all of the retractions I have seen have been in the bio-med or chemistry side. I have never seen a retraction in engineering that was not the result of blatant plagiarism or fake peer reviews.

Why the difference? Are fields like engineering and physics just more cut-and-dry and straight-forward, making it easier to spot bad research during peer review? On the other hand, could it be that these fields simply ignore bad papers in the literature and do not make a major effort to identify and remove them like in the life sciences side of the house?

Perhaps the expectations of researchers in the different fields partially explain it too. In my area of engineering, ~40 solid journal papers, a stream of conference papers, and ~1000-1500 citations is a very good total for a whole career (30+ years) at a university in the United States (I know full professors who have under 400 citations but still had several million dollars in grants). On the other hand, I have seen postdocs in some of the life-science fields who publish 10-15 papers and get 500 citations per year and still struggle to get jobs - I know of someone with a PhD in biology from a top-100 US school and with two Nature papers (and 12 other papers) who works at Whole Foods and drives for Uber because that is all he could get. Clearly there is a lot of pressure in the life-sciences and perhaps this has the effect of encouraging sloppy (and occasionally fraudulent) work for some people and groups.

Comments/opinions/experiences in this area?