  Retracted papers often circulate widely on social media, digital news and
other websites before their official retraction. The spread of potentially
inaccurate or misleading results from retracted papers can harm the scientific
community and the public. Here we quantify the amount and type of attention
3,851 retracted papers received over time in different online platforms.
Comparing to a set of non-retracted control papers from the same journals, with
similar publication year, number of co-authors and author impact, we show that
retracted papers receive more attention after publication not only on social
media, but also on heavily curated platforms, such as news outlets and
knowledge repositories, amplifying the negative impact on the public. At the
same time, we find that posts on Twitter tend to express more criticism about
retracted than about control papers, suggesting that criticism-expressing
tweets could contain factual information about problematic papers. Most
importantly, around the time they are retracted, papers generate discussions
that are primarily about the retraction incident rather than about research
findings, showing that by this point papers have exhausted attention to their
results and highlighting the limited effect of retractions. Our findings reveal
the extent to which retracted papers are discussed on different online
platforms and identify at scale audience criticism towards them. In this
context, we show that retraction is not an effective tool to reduce online
attention to problematic papers.
