  Scientists involved in scientific misconduct may face social stigmatization,
leading to isolation and limited opportunities for collaboration. The
reputation of every individual is reflected on the team, as the fraud attempted
by any member will be reflected on the team. Earlier studies pointed out the
impact of citation penalty on the prior work of coauthors, the effect of
retraction on a co-author's research career, and stigmatization through mere
association. This paper explores the formation and dynamics of the networks of
authors who faced retractions and their "innocent coauthors" who never faced
retractions in their careers. Leveraging a dataset of 5972 retracted papers
involving 24209 authors, we investigate whether scientific misconduct reduces
collaborative ties of misconducting authors as opposed to those who never faced
allegations of academic misconduct. We observe that the network structure of
authors involved in retractions does not change significantly over the years
compared to that of the "innocent coauthors". Our results suggest that
stigmatization rarely affects the collaboration network of stigmatized authors.
Our findings have implications for institutions adopting stringent measures and
fostering ethical practices research.
