Among such retractions, does misconduct (fraud, duplication, plagiarism) appear to be a major factor? A. No, misconduct does not appear to be a major factor because the majority of retractions were due to misconduct. B. Yes, misconduct appears to be a major factor because the majority of retractions were due to misconduct. C. Yes, misconduct appears to be a major factor because the majority of retractions were not due to misconduct. D. No, misconduct does not appear to be a major factor because the majority of retractions were not due to misconduct.

The correct answer to this open question is the following.

It seems that your question is incomplete. There is more information needed to know what are the "retractions" referred to in the question.

However, trying to be of help, we did some research and can comment on the following.

The correct answer is B) Yes, misconduct appears to be a major factor because the majority of retractions were due to misconduct.

So, among such retractions, misconduct (fraud, duplication, plagiarism) appeared to be a major factor.

We can support our answer with the following comments.

There is a study of retractions in biomedical journals conducted by  Fang, Steen, and Casadevall. This study was known as "Misconduct Accounts for the Majority of Retracted Scientific Publications." After the study, they concluded that 436 retractions were due to error, 201 were due to plagiarism, 888 were due to fraud, 29 were duplications of publications, and 287 had other different causes.

That is why misconduct appears to be a major factor because the majority of retractions were due to misconduct.