The Dissemination of Scientific Fake News: On the Ranking of Retracted Articles in Google

Item Type

Language

English

Abstract

Fake news can originate from scientific fraud. An article can be retracted upon discovery of fraud. A case study shows, however, that such fake science can be visible in Google even after the article is retracted. Authors hypothesize that the explanation lies in the popularity-based logic governing Google’s foundational PageRank algorithm, in conjunction with the “law of retraction”: a retraction notice is typically taken to be less interesting and therefore less popular with internet users than the original content retracted. This chapter presents an empirical study drawing on records of articles retracted due to fraud (fabrication of data) in the Retraction Watch public database. It finds that both Google Search and Google Scholar more often than not rank a link to the original article higher than a link indicating that the article has been retracted. Thus, both Google Search and Google Scholar risk disseminating fake science through their ranking algorithms.

Subject

Social media
Fake news
Algorithm accuracy
Retraction watch
Scientific fraud

Publication Title

Publication Year

2021

Publication Date

2021

Source

University Press Scholarship

License

ISBN

978-0-19-886397-7

Publication Place

Oxford

Short Title

The Dissemination of Scientific Fake News

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The Dissemination of Scientific Fake News: On the Ranking of Retracted Articles in Google, dans Science & Ignorance, consulté le 21 Novembre 2024, https://ignorancestudies.inist.fr/s/science-ignorance/item/5057

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