According to a study in PNAS, scientific retraction of inaccurate and harmful papers exhausts their attention by the time they get addressed upon public dissemination.
Retracted papers often spread through many regions of the digital environment, from social networking sites to digital news outlets, posing a tough challenge.
“The spread of potentially inaccurate or misleading results from retracted papers can harm the scientific community and the public,” the authors of this study said in their report.
“Here, we quantify the amount and type of attention 3,851 retracted papers received over time in different online platforms.”
From the findings: “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.”
Overall, the findings unveil the scope of which retracted papers are spread through different channels of the digital environment, establishing the scale of audience criticism associated with them.
