“They Only Silence the Truth”: COVID-19 retractions and the politicization of science

Rod Abhari*, Emőke Ágnes Horvát

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

Abstract

Retracted COVID-19 articles have circulated widely on social media. Although retractions are intended to correct the scientific record, when trust in science is low, they 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. These results demonstrate how retractions can be selectively used by scientific counterpublics to reframe the regulation of science as evidence of its institutional corruption.

Original languageEnglish (US)
JournalPublic Understanding of Science
DOIs
StateAccepted/In press - 2024

Funding

The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This research was partially funded by NSF Career Grant IIS-1943506.

Keywords

  • conspiracy theories
  • COVID-19
  • politicization of science
  • scientific retractions

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Communication
  • Developmental and Educational Psychology
  • Arts and Humanities (miscellaneous)

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