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

Authors and Year: Rod Abhari and Emőke-Ágnes Horvát, 2024

Journal: Public Understanding of Science (SAGE Journals) (open access)

TL;DR: Retractions are a necessary part of the scientific practice to ensure that it is kept as accurate as possible. When scientific findings are politicized, however, retractions may be distorted as censorship or incompetence by those looking to advance their own political fortunes.

Why I chose this paper: It is my (perhaps optimistic) belief that the majority of the American public still values qualities such as truth, curiosity, and progress, and that many folks are misled in part because of a lack of understanding about the scientific process. As science communicators, I believe the best path forward to combat misinformation is to be more transparent and to do a better job communicating why science is a benefit for all.

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The Background

COVID-19 – A “Wicked Problem”

The SARS-CoV-2 virus burst onto the world stage in the first months of 2020, spreading quickly enough that it became a pandemic within three months. The speed of the virus forced governments worldwide into a series of measures aimed at slowing the disease. In the US, the pandemic response took on an extra dimension, as it coincided with an election year and an atmosphere of extreme polarization. Scientists were also scrambling, attempting to balance the need for immediate information about the virus with rigorous science. As the dust settled, over 400 articles that were published on the topic of COVID-19 were later retracted. In this climate, COVID skeptics took advantage of this rush of scientific findings and confusion about the scientific process to sow distrust in the entire field. The retraction process in scientific publishing – by which an article is identified as having a major error – was sometimes misinterpreted as “evidence” of conspiracy instead of its intended purpose as another step of maintaining scientific credibility. In this article, the authors sought to answer the question “How is politicization reflected in, and furthered by, public discussions of relevant scientific articles and their retraction?”

The Methods

The Public Discussion

The authors used two databases, Retraction Watch and Altmetric, to identify two retracted COVID-19 articles that were the most linked by posts on the Twitter/X social media platform. They analyzed the content and timing of these posts as a proxy for the public discussion around the papers’ – subsequently retracted – findings. Mehra20 discussed the potential harms of hydroxychloroquine (an alternative solution frequently touted by President Trump and popular among conservatives), but was later retracted due to evidence of data fabrication. Meanwhile, Rose21 highlighted potential harms from vaccines but was later withdrawn for unknown reasons. The authors note that Rose21 used a dataset that could not be verified and was not intended to establish potential harms caused by vaccines as the most likely reason for this withdrawal. 

The authors characterized English language Twitter/X posts about the two articles to identify what the public was saying about the original scientific findings, the retraction, potential scientific flaws, and underlying motivations for both the original publication and subsequent retraction of the article.

The Results

A Selective Understanding of Science

Mehra20 was shared nearly 30,000 times on Twitter/X, with a little over half of those posts occurring before the article was retracted. Of these posts, many users highlighted the study’s main conclusion: that hydroxychloroquine was not an effective COVID treatment and could be harmful if taken. However, after several scientists – including one who promoted hydroxychloroquine as a potential treatment –  began to publicize flaws with the article, the majority of the social media posts echoed this critical sentiment, culminating in an open letter asking for the retraction of the article. 

After the article was retracted, nearly every post sharing the article explicitly called attention to the retraction of the findings, suggesting that the retraction of the article had done its job in debunking poor science. However, over 50% of the post-retraction posts went a step further, calling into question the motives of the authors, publishers, and media in publicizing the original findings. Despite other articles that also suggested hydroxychloroquine needed additional testing to prove an effective treatment, many (28% of post-retraction posts) implied that the original article and its publicization were evidence of corruption in the media, medical establishment, and/or Big Pharma. 

Rose21, meanwhile, found that myocarditis rates were significantly higher for those who were administered the COVID vaccine. However, they used a database that relies on self-reported symptoms and does not purport to establish causality from vaccines. Like Mehra20, this article was widely shared, almost 15,000 times, before it was retracted. Unlike Mehra, nearly all (99%) of these posts shared the findings of the article uncritically, and the majority used the article as evidence against personal vaccine use or public vaccination requirements. However, two weeks after publication, the article was withdrawn from the journal’s website and replaced with a vague message about the “temporary removal” of the piece. This atypical retraction procedure (usually an article’s text is kept but clearly identifiable as “retracted”) prompted many social media users – including the papers own authors – to speculate that the act of retraction was an act of political censorship. Many went a step further, using the retraction as “evidence” that actually corroborated the paper’s original findings of vaccine harm. In this instance, the retraction led to a doubling down on an unsupported scientific finding. 

The Impact 

Politicization Undermines Science

Retractions are a necessary, albeit uncommon, method for correcting the scientific record. In times of high public trust in science, this operation may be seen as another attempt by the field to be self-correcting. However, when science itself is politicized, retractions may be selectively understood as a tool of censorship instead of correction. This is highlighted by the contrasting reactions to the retractions of Mehra20 and Rose21; where the retraction of the former was largely accepted, but that of the latter was either ignored or used as “evidence” of a larger conspiracy. In this way, invoking political ideology undermines the scientific process and ultimately benefits stakeholders with an anti-scientific agenda who are more likely to engage in conspiratorial thinking.

In order to counteract misleading conspirators and a misled public, the scientific process as a whole should be made as transparent as possible. In the context of retractions, the authors contend that publishers need to explain and apply a clear and consistent framework to avoid accusations of bias. Likewise, even though a retracted article may itself contain misinformation, its content should still remain available, as wholesale article removal may be seen as “evidence” of a larger conspiracy. Instead, the authors suggest that a publisher should clearly indicate why a retracted article did not meet the appropriate standards for scientific publication in an effort to educate the public about the retraction process. 

Combating intentional misinterpretation of science, specifically in the context of retractions, takes patience, consistency, and transparency. This piece aligns with these values by acknowledging that the retraction process can be confusing, but that doesn’t mean it needs to stay that way.

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Written by Clark Hickman

Edited by Paula R. Buchanan

Featured image credit: squarefrog via Pixabay