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When I last looked, Google Scholar doesn't take any action on paper retractions. It seems there is no reporting system in place. Researchers Brock and Thornley
by PennRobotics 5y ago
When I last looked, Google Scholar doesn't take any action on paper retractions. It seems there is no reporting system in place.
Researchers Brock and Thornley of New Zealand published and then almost immediately retracted a paper linking COVID-19 vaccines and a much-higher-than-previously-found miscarriage rate. Scholar still lists the original paper posted---with no cover page indicating the retraction. (They do have a separate link to the retraction press release if you look for it.) The main result on Scholar links to a half dozen "not-so-academic" websites (ellinikahoaxes.gr, wokeguru.org, resistance-mondiale.com) hosting the same paper. I'm willing to bet even if the original paper could be removed, independent websites would continue to try relisting it.
While it's important to keep a record of bad research rather than scrubbing it away from history entirely, it seems feasible to have a reporting system in place for paper retractions, where the title link includes [retracted dd-mm-yyyy] or something.
This was my small taste of disappointment (aka loss of confidence) in a relatively popular academic tool.