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

The Dissemination of Scientific Fake News: On the Ranking of Retracted Articles in Google. Genot, E. J. & Olsson, E. J. In The Epistemology of Fake News. Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2021.

Paper doi abstract bibtex

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Scholar more often than not rank a link to the original article higher than a link indicating that the article has been retracted.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.

@incollection{genot_dissemination_2021,
	address = {Oxford},
	title = {The {Dissemination} of {Scientific} {Fake} {News}: {On} the {Ranking} of {Retracted} {Articles} in {Google}},
	isbn = {978-0-19-886397-7},
	shorttitle = {The {Dissemination} of {Scientific} {Fake} {News}},
	url = {https://oxford.universitypressscholarship.com/10.1093/oso/9780198863977.001.0001/oso-9780198863977-chapter-11},
	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.},
	language = {eng},
	urldate = {2022-05-17},
	booktitle = {The {Epistemology} of {Fake} {News}},
	publisher = {Oxford University Press},
	author = {Genot, Emmanuel J. and Olsson, Erik J.},
	year = {2021},
	doi = {10.1093/oso/9780198863977.003.0011},
	keywords = {9 Post-truth, fake-news and sciences, PRINTED (Fonds papier), algorithm accuracy, fake news, retraction watch, scientific fraud, social media},
}

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