ArticlePublic understanding of science (Bristol, England)2025
"They Only Silence the Truth": COVID-19 retractions and the politicization of science.
Article in Public understanding of science (Bristol, England), 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Not yet cited in PubMed.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
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2 authors.
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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.
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What Socratic holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the Socratic graph.