Dynamics of Cross-Platform Attention to Retracted Papers

TL;DR

This study analyzes how retracted scientific papers continue to attract attention across various online platforms, often more than non-retracted papers, and finds that retractions have limited impact on reducing this attention.

Contribution

It provides a large-scale quantitative analysis of online attention dynamics to retracted papers, revealing persistent discussion and criticism despite retraction.

Findings

Retracted papers receive more attention post-publication than controls.

Twitter criticism about retracted papers is more frequent than for non-retracted papers.

Discussions around retractions focus on the incident rather than research findings.

Abstract

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 to a set of non-retracted control papers from the same journals, with similar publication year, number of co-authors 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 towards them. In this context, we show that retraction is not an effective tool to reduce online attention to problematic papers.