Phys.org June 15, 2022
The spread of potentially inaccurate or misleading results from retracted papers can harm the scientific community and the public. A team of researchers in the US (University of Michigan, Northwestern University) has quantified 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, they showed 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, the posts on Twitter tend to express more criticism about retracted than about control papers, suggesting that criticism-expressing tweets could contain information about problematic papers. Most importantly, around the time they are retracted, papers generated discussions that are primarily about the retraction incident rather than about research findings. According to the researchers retraction is not an effective tool to reduce online attention to problematic papers...read more. Open Access TECHNICAL ARTICLEÂ
Illustration of the research process that compares the online attention received by retracted and control papers… Credit: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (2022)Â