By Rod Abhari and Emőke-Ágnes Horvát. Whether science is seen as “self-correcting” or “broken” depends in part on how the public understands retractions. Scientific retractions are increasingly used to correct the scientific record. Last year, over 10,000 academic articles were retracted, marking an all-time high. But while scientists may see retractions as an assurance of scientific integrity when a scientific topic has been the subject of political controversy, the public may see them as evidence of incompetence or even corruption. Our recent article , available online in Public Understanding of Science, examined social media posts of the most discussed retracted COVID-19 articles in order to better understand the relationship between scientific retractions and the politicization of science. When Retractions Failed In May 2020, The Lancet published a study concluding that hydroxychloroquine—a drug promoted by then-President Donald Trump—was ineffective a...
By Joop de Boer and Harry Aiking. Photo credit: Unsplash “Viruses have been produced in government laboratories to control our freedom”. Conspiratorial anti-science beliefs such as the previous statement mix two related categories of unwarranted beliefs and attitudes: That of conspiratorial ideas and that of anti-science attitudes. The very existence and diffusion of such beliefs highlights an opposition between “the common people” versus “the social elite,” including academics, scholars, and experts, but this opposition shows itself in a variety of ways. The beliefs combine a mistreatment of the people with an image of science that seriously contradicts the cultural values of intellectual autonomy, egalitarianism, and commitments to the welfare of others. In European countries, the importance of these values is associated with national wealth and women’s political representation. Hence, characteristics of both individuals and countries are important to clarify t...