When Do Scholarly Retractions Become a Form of Censorship?

A retraction represents episode in which a paper is designated by its publisher as being so flawed that the conclusions can’t be relied upon.

About two-thirds of the time, retractions arise from academic misconduct.

Sometimes, the timing of a retraction can raise suspicions of ideological interference.

In some cases, critics allege, calls for retraction rise to the level of “mobbing”.

Authors of such works will sometimes present caveats about their own work as an apparent pre-emptive effort to prevent guilt by association.

Authors sometimes take the initiative by asking to have their articles retracted after they observe that they are being cited in support of unfashionable conclusions.

But culture-war critics often claim “censorship” when there’s credible evidence that a retracted paper is just flat out wrong.

Authors of an article published in Public Understanding of Science , relying on our tally of more than 500 retractions of COVID-19 -related papers, note that the works in question “were either retracted from publication or withdrawn from preprint servers due to serious research or publishing errors.

Authors say retractions and article withdrawals don’t always serve to reduce the influence of the underlying conclusions.