Abhari Rod, Horvát Emőke-Ágnes
Northwestern University, USA.
Public Underst Sci. 2025 Apr;34(3):291-306. doi: 10.1177/09636625241290142. Epub 2024 Oct 30.
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.
被撤回的新冠病毒相关文章在社交媒体上广泛传播。尽管撤回旨在纠正科学记录，但在对科学的信任度较低时，它们可能反而会被解读为审查制度的证据，或者干脆被忽视。我们对两条分享最广泛的被撤回新冠病毒相关文章（Mehra20和Rose21）在撤回前后的推文进行了内容分析。当Mehra20被视为对唐纳德·特朗普和羟氯喹的政治化攻击时，其撤回被广泛分享，作为该文章出于政治原因而发表的证据。然而，当Rose21被疫苗反对者视为疫苗有害的证据时，其撤回要么被忽视，要么被诬陷为审查真相的阴谋。这些结果表明，科学反公众如何能够有选择地利用撤回，将科学监管重新构建为其机构腐败的证据。
