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Short abstract:

When an article that has been circulated to support a fringe scientific position is retracted, its retraction may be misconstrued as evidence of scientific corruption. We document this phenomenon in online attention to COVID-19 retractions. We discuss the implications for public trust in science.

Long abstract:

Over 400 research articles about COVID-19 have either been retracted from publication or withdrawn from preprint servers due to serious research or publishing errors. By violating research norms, many of these articles were able to fabricate novel or controversial findings that received more academic citations and media attention than non-retracted COVID-19 research. Retracted COVID-19 research has jeopardized public health efforts by supporting untested treatments, casting doubt on the effectiveness of face masks, and claiming that 5G radio towers transmit COVID-19.

The retractions of these papers were designed to correct the scientific record. However, in the context of politicized science, retractions may instead be interpreted as evidence of censorship or simply ignored. We performed a content analysis of tweets about the two most widely shared retracted COVID-19 articles, Mehra20 and Rose21, before and after their retractions. When Mehra20 was seen as a politicized attack on Donald Trump and hydroxychloroquine, its retraction was broadly shared as proof that the article had been published for political reasons. However, when Rose21 was seen as evidence of vaccine harm by vaccine opponents, its retraction was either ignored or else framed as a conspiracy to censor the truth.

Our results demonstrate how scientific counterpublics can selectively use conspiracy to explain away both the publication of disfavored scientific findings and the retraction of favored scientific findings. We end with a discussion of the standards that scientific publishers should adopt to address these concerns.