Bad Science: Retractions and Media Coverage

Eleonora Alabrese

No 10195, CESifo Working Paper Series from CESifo

Abstract: Flawed research can be harmful both within and outside of academia. Even when published research has been retracted and refuted by the scientific community, it may continue to be a source of misinformation. The media can play an important role in drawing broader attention to research, but may also ensure that research, once retracted, ceases to feature in popular discourse. Yet, there is little evidence on whether media reporting influences the retraction process and authors’ careers. Using a conditional difference-in-differences strategy, this paper shows that articles that gained popularity in the media at publication and were later retracted face heavy citation losses, while subsequent citations become more accurate. Further, authors of such papers see a permanent decline in research output. Lastly, the paper provides evidence that media can influence both the likelihood of retraction and its timing, highlighting that the media can play an important role in contributing to the integrity of the research process.

Keywords: science; retractions; media coverage; misinformation; Altmetric; citations; career impact (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-sog
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (6)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.cesifo.org/DocDL/cesifo1_wp10195.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ces:ceswps:_10195

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in CESifo Working Paper Series from CESifo Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Klaus Wohlrabe ().