Journal
PROCEEDINGS OF THE NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
Volume 119, Issue 25, Pages -Publisher
NATL ACAD SCIENCES
DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2119086119
Keywords
retraction; science of science; collective attention; scientific misinformation
Categories
Funding
- NSF [IIS-1943506]
- Air Force Office of Scientific Research Award [FA9550-19-1-0029]
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Retracted papers often circulate widely online before their official retraction, which can harm the scientific community and the public. This study shows that retracted papers receive more attention not only on social media but also on curated platforms, amplifying their negative impact. Additionally, posts on Twitter tend to express more criticism about retracted papers, suggesting the presence of factual information about problematic papers.
Retracted papers often circulate widely on social media, digital news, and other websites before their official retraction. The spread of potentially inaccurate or misleading results from retracted papers can harm the scientific community and the public. Here, we quantify the amount and type of attention 3,851 retracted papers received over time in different online platforms. Comparing with a set of nonretracted control papers from the same journals with similar publication year, number of coauthors, and author impact, we show that retracted papers receive more attention after publication not only on social media but also, on heavily curated platforms, such as news outlets and knowledge repositories, amplifying the negative impact on the public. At the same time, we find that posts on Twitter tend to express more criticism about retracted than about control papers, suggesting that criticism-expressing tweets could contain factual information about problematic papers. Most importantly, around the time they are retracted, papers generate discussions that are primarily about the retraction incident rather than about research findings, showing that by this point, papers have exhausted attention to their results and highlighting the limited effect of retractions. Our findings reveal the extent to which retracted papers are discussed on different online platforms and identify at scale audience criticism toward them. In this context, we show that retraction is not an effective tool to reduce online attention to problematic papers.
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