Causal Impact of Media Attention on Retraction Efficiency

Establish whether news media and social media attention causally accelerate the retraction process and enhance the efficiency of scientific self-correction, beyond correlational associations observed in observational analyses.

Background

The paper provides observational evidence that higher news and X attention associates with shorter retraction time lags and, for news, increased post-retraction citations, but acknowledges the limitations of causal inference in its design.

The authors explicitly note that causality has not been established, leaving open whether media attention directly causes faster retractions or improved self-correction efficiency.

References

Although no cause-and-effect relationship has been shown, the potential role of news and social media in accelerating the retraction process suggests that increased public scrutiny can enhance the efficiency of scientific self-correction.

— Can news and social media attention reduce the influence of problematic research? (2503.18215 - Zheng et al., 23 Mar 2025) in Section 5, Conclusions