ArticlePloS one2021
Media and social media attention to retracted articles according to Altmetric.
Article in PloS one, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 14 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
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.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
14 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.
- Artificial intelligence in the retraction spotlight: trends, causes and consequences of withdrawn AI literature through a systematic bibliometric review.Frontiers in research metrics and analytics · 2025Pooled it
- Retraction Analysis in Social Media Research: A Scopus Based Data From 2011 to 2025.Journal of Korean medical science · 2026Article
- Altmetric Activity and Scientific Integrity: A Retraction Analysis of PubMed-Indexed Social Media-Related Publications.Journal of Korean medical science · 2026Article
- "They Only Silence the Truth": COVID-19 retractions and the politicization of science.Public understanding of science (Bristol, England) · 2025Article
- The trend and ripple effects of retractions in primary health care: A bibliometric analysis.Journal of the Chinese Medical Association : JCMA · 2024Article
- Citations in Wikipedia for understanding research reach.Journal of the Medical Library Association : JMLA · 2024Article
- High-cited favorable studies for COVID-19 treatments ineffective in large trials.Journal of clinical epidemiology · 2022Article
- Threats to scholarly research integrity arising from paper mills: a rapid scoping review.Clinical rheumatology · 2022Article
- Dynamics of cross-platform attention to retracted papers.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2022Article
- Continued Visibility of COVID-19 Article Removals.Southern medical journal · 2022Article
- Beliefs and misperceptions about naloxone and overdose among U.S. laypersons: a cross-sectional study.BMC public health · 2022Article
- Improving the Reliability of Literature Reviews: Detection of Retracted Articles through Academic Search Engines.European journal of investigation in health, psychology and education · 2022Article
- Bibliometric and Altmetric Analysis of Retracted Articles on COVID-19.Journal of Korean medical science · 2022Article
- Identifying science in the news: An assessment of the precision and recall of Altmetric.com news mention data.Scientometrics · 2022Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
3 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
The number of retracted articles has grown fast. However, the extent to which researchers and the public are made adequately aware of these retractions and how the media and social media respond to them remains unknown. Here, we aimed to evaluate the media and social media attention received by retracted articles and assess also the attention they receive post-retraction versus pre-retraction. We downloaded all records of retracted literature maintained by the Retraction Watch Database and originally published between January 1, 2010 to December 31, 2015. For all 3,008 retracted articles with a separate DOI for the original and its retraction, we downloaded the respective Altmetric Attention Score (AAS) (from Altmetric) and citation count (from Crossref), for the original article and its retraction notice on June 6, 2018. We also compared the AAS of a random sample of 572 retracted full journal articles available on PubMed to that of unretracted full articles matched from the same issue and journal. 1,687 (56.1%) of retracted research articles received some amount of Altmetric attention, and 165 (5.5%) were even considered popular (AAS>20). 31 (1.0%) of 2,953 with a record on Crossref received >100 citations by June 6, 2018. Popular articles received substantially more attention than their retraction, even after adjusting for attention received post-retraction (Median difference, 29; 95% CI, 17-61). Unreliable results were the most frequent reason for retraction of popular articles (32; 19%), while fake peer review was the most common reason (421; 15%) for the retraction of other articles. In comparison to matched articles, retracted articles tended to receive more Altmetric attention (23/31 matched groups; P-value, 0.01), even after adjusting for attention received post-retraction. Our findings reveal that retracted articles may receive high attention from media and social media and that for popular articles, pre-retraction attention far outweighs post-retraction attention.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion 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 OpenQuestion graph.