Retractions are a sign that science is working as it should.
When papers turn out to be flawed, journals typically correct the record to stem the spread of incorrect information and clarify that the other work in their catalogue can be trusted. In just one recent high-profile example, the International Journal of Antimicrobial Agents this week retracted a controversial paper on hydroxychloroquine as an effective treatment for Covid-19 that had drawn ample criticism over methodological and ethical issues.
But because retractions acknowledge that peer-reviewed research isn’t infallible, they can also strengthen distrust in science and present avenues for scientists to be attacked. Experts say that in an increasingly politicized and sometimes hostile information ecosystem, journals will have to adapt — both by making retractions as transparent as possible, and by making them more comprehensible to the general public.
“In an environment in which knowledge is emerging very rapidly, in an unusually high volume, you’re going to have errors. Those errors don’t necessarily mean duplicity,” said Kathleen Hall Jamieson, director of the Annenberg Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania, who has studied the way media outlets cover retractions.
Retractions can reinforce bias against science
During the Covid-19 pandemic, science progressed at a breakneck pace — leading to highly effective vaccines and treatments in record time, but also to hundreds of articles that have since been retracted.
While some research has looked into how retracted articles can continue to circulate in academic literature, less has been done on the effects of retractions among the general public.
But a recent study, published in Public Understanding of Science, used social media reactions to two prominent retractions on Covid-related research as a case study for how retractions can change people’s perception of science. The two cases, in opposing ways, show how groups that are already biased against scientific institutions can use retractions to bolster their preexisting beliefs.
In one case, a paper published in The Lancet, purporting to show that hydroxychloroquine was not a viable treatment for Covid-19 was retracted because of concerns over the “veracity of the data,” according to the retraction notice.
Before it was retracted, many people on the social media platform X (formerly Twitter) were sharing the paper and its key findings. Some took issue with then-president Donald Trump’s promotion of hydroxychloroquine as a viable treatment for Covid-19. Others focused on the paper’s methodology and the data’s potential flaws.
After the paper’s retraction, the scientific consensus remained that hydroxychloroquine was not an effective treatment for Covid-19. Even so, people on social media began posting that the retraction showed how Big Pharma or the “medical establishment” had attempted to discredit hydroxychloroquine to push more expensive drugs.
In the other retracted study, a paper published in Current Problems in Cardiology claimed cases of myocarditis related to Covid vaccines were higher than reported elsewhere, using self-reports from a government database. It was retracted for reasons that were not disclosed by the journal at the time.
Before the retraction, there was little conversation on social media about the paper’s methodology and rigor. It was primarily used as a justification for not getting a Covid vaccine, particularly for parents making the choice on behalf of their children.
Afterward, tweets interpreted the retraction not as a sign of flaws in the original study, but as indicative of the pharmaceutical industry’s efforts to silence research that ran counter to its narrative.
“That helps spread the perception that not only was this paper valid, but in fact, it was retracted because it was true, right?” said Rod Abhari, a sociologist of science at Northwestern University who worked on the new study. “It feeds into a larger victim narrative.”
Further fanning the flames may be the fact that the journal did not explain the reasons behind the retraction. Instead the paper was simply wiped from its website, along the message, “This article has been withdrawn at the request of the author(s) and/or editor. The Publisher apologizes for any inconvenience this may cause.”
In the absence of an official justification, the study’s authors suggested that the retraction was the result of interference. One of the authors, Peter McCullough, wrote on Substack, “I believe any paper is targeted that brings hope to patients on early therapy, natural immunity, or reveals failure of government narratives concerning contagion control or vaccine safety. The biopharmaceutical complex uses a variety of measures to coerce editors/publishers to retract manuscripts and remove threats to the ‘official narrative’ depicting the virus is deadly, unassailable, with the only solution being continued mass vaccination.”
Asked about the reasons for the retraction, a spokesperson for Elsevier, which publishes the journal, said that concerns had been “raised on a number of fronts leading to further review. Upon that further review flaws were detected in the work.”
The spokesperson continued: “Our goal is to prevent any cases that could potentially compromise the integrity of the scientific record and trust in research.”
Reimagining retractions
Social media posts, particularly from X, may not be the best proxy for widespread public discourse surrounding science. But the study does shed light on the struggles scientists face in communicating their research and the complicated processes that produce it.
“Science in general is becoming easier to access and arguably more important for political projects,” said Abhari. “So retractions may also be uniquely important due to the fact that they show evidence of scientific failures, or failures like in the short term, that could theoretically provide evidence of a larger institutional problem.”
The new study, both Jamieson and Abhari agree, shows the need for journals to act quickly and transparently in response to concerns raised about papers. Both of the papers in the study were retracted about two weeks after they were published.
“They were immediately panned and they got retracted really quickly. You could see that as the success of the scientific process, or you could see that as, ‘What was happening in the editorial process that it made it through when it was so clear, once it was released, that there was an issue?” said Mallory Harris, a researcher who studies infectious disease and health decision making at the University of Maryland, who was not affiliated with the new study.
The longer a retraction is delayed, the more time it has to get embedded in public consciousness. An infamous paper by Andrew Wakefield connecting the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine to autism took 12 years to get retracted.
The weaponization of retractions also raises larger questions for scientific publishing and the way researchers discuss their work. For one, the open science movement in recent years has sought to make research freely accessible to researchers and the general public. But the expansion of open access papers doesn’t necessarily mean the general public understands how the process of publishing research works.
Harris studied the sentiment of anti-vaccine groups during the pandemic. She found that “they were more willing to share scientific articles on Twitter than their pro-vaccine counterparts. They are extremely engaged with what, at face value, appears to be scientific literature, and people who appear to be experts. That really changes how we need to be addressing this, because you can’t just give them your expert. They have their own.”
Nor have journals changed the way they publish retractions. “Retraction notices are assumed to be speaking to other scientists. Only now, in the last 10 years, that no longer can be presumed,” Abhari said.
Abhari hopes journals can reimagine what retractions look like. He also says he sees why retractions can wind up sowing distrust.
People who see retractions as proof of larger systemic problems in science “go from the individual researcher who commits an error to ‘All of the science as an institution is failing.’ I think that’s a leap,” he said. “But I also understand that it’s like this image of a cancer” — in which one impurity indicates that the larger whole is corrupt. “I don’t think that the nuance there is easy to communicate in the retraction notice.”