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

"1. Introduction

... [O]ur study performed a close reading of English-language tweets for two retracted COVID-19 articles frequently discussed on social media in order to analyze how their publication and retraction were variously received. The first article we analyzed, Mehra20 [Hydroxychloroquine or Chloroquine with or Without a Macrolide for Treatment of COVID-19: A Multinational Registry Analysis], was published on the subject of hydroxychloroquine harms and retracted due to evidence of data fabrication. While the retraction silenced the uncritical discussion of its findings, it also appeared to vindicate the belief that the article had been published in order to malign hydroxychloroquine and its most prominent supporter, Donald Trump. The second article, Rose21 [A Report on Myocarditis Adverse Events in the U.S. Vaccine Adverse Events Reporting System (VAERS) in Association with COVID-19 Injectable Biological Products], was published about vaccine harms and withdrawn for undisclosed reasons. As a result, the retraction was either ignored or framed as an attempt to censor the truth of its findings, which had been widely shared by vaccine opponents...

5. Discussion

Transparent retractions are essential: Finally, our study underscores the need for publishers to be transparent with the public when conducting retractions. Although retraction guidelines advise publishers to clearly describe the reasons for an article’s retraction and avoid removing the original article (Barbour et al., 2019), some publishers have skirted these norms by calling an article’s unexplained removal a 'withdrawal' instead of a 'retraction.' However, as our analysis of Rose21 shows, these opaque retraction policies can erode scientific trust...

To mitigate public suspicion, two practices are essential. First, retraction notices should clearly articulate the transgression that motivated the article’s retraction... And second, barring exceptional circumstances, retractions should not remove the original article. Although retracted articles can act as a source of misinformation, once an article has entered the public record, it is imprudent to attempt to remove it. When framed as politically motivated, article removals can be seen as an act of political censorship and subsequently erode scientific trust."