The “zombie facts” live on even after black plastic and other studies have been corrected or retracted

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Titles warning people They keep throwing out black plastic kitchen utensils, as do social media posts warning of “hidden toxins” in your kitchen.

Less prominent? A correction for peer-reviewed research those titles were taken as a basis.

In October, the journal Chemosphere published a study by researchers in the United States and the Netherlands that found brominated flame retardants (BFRs) in black plastic household products sold in the United States, including kitchen utensils.

A mathematical error occurred when the study authors calculated the risk – and it was slightly reduced order of magnitude.

The authors said sorry for the mistakehowever, it “does not affect the overall conclusion of the paper” because it is part of a sample used to compare exposure levels to add context, not a primary finding.

“The main thing our research is doing is proving that toxic flame retardants can have their way when they’re used in electronics. becomes household products where they are not needed or expected,” said Megan Liu of Toxic-Free Future, a Seattle environmental group who co-authored the study.

Flame retardants are commonly used in black plastics such as television housings, and when these plastics are recycled, the chemicals can end up in food contact products.

While media coverage of the study often focuses on what people can do, like trench black plastic spatulas, Liu said the ultimate solution is more regulation.

Unfortunately, errors do occur, including in peer-reviewed studies. They can range from a corrected typo or miscalculation, to errors so large that the paper is retracted, to the rare but outright fraud. The promise of the scientific process is that by exposing the work revision of othersany problem will be fixed in time.

The problem is that it takes time — and as a result, corrections rarely bring the original errors to public attention, journal editors say.

Tim Caulfield, author The Illusion of Certainty: What You Don’t Know and Why It Mattersand a professor at the University of Alberta’s law school and school of public health studies the distortion of facts and information.

“It was interesting, exciting, scary, and over-hyped,” Caulfield said of the black plastic investigation. “The correction happens, and the problem is that the correction almost always has less absorption and the original story continues, right? It just becomes a zombie fact that won’t die.”

The fraud was allowed to fester

There could be no bigger shadow than a paper retracted from Andrew Wakefield’s fraudulent and discredited 1998 study claiming a link between the measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) vaccine and autism.

The study was finally done It was retracted by the Lancet journal In 2010, following further investigations and an investigation by regulators, Wakefield was found to be “irresponsible and dishonest”.

But it was 12 years after its publication, allowing the disinformation to permeate popular culture.

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“It took too long to pull back,” Caulfield said. “Withdrawals, unless they are done quickly and communicated clearly, the withdrawal itself can be a political turn. becomes a badge of honor.”

Acting quickly to withdraw is important to maintain public trust and make sure the scientific literature is as untainted as possible, he said.

According to Wakefield’s research, Ivan Oransky, who teaches medical journalism at New York University and co-founded Retraction Watch, a website that tracks errors in journals. it took so long to retreat, “the lie is allowed to fester and inform public opinion. We see it now, of course, With RFK Jr.”

Robert Kennedy Jr., who may be the secretary of health in the newly elected US President Donald Trump’s administration. questions, for example, if vaccines have done more harm than good.

Stanford University anesthesiologist and clinical pharmacologist who worked as editor-in-chief of Anesthesia and Analgesia medical journal.

Shafer and other doctors, including Wakefield, are suffering ongoing injury and harm from the withdrawal measles vaccination rates that fell down after publication.

Admitting honest mistakes

To be clear, there is no allegation of fraud in the black plastic study and it is only corrected, not retracted.

When honest mistakes happen, Oransky said, science should normalize owning legitimate mistakes and support the behavior. “Humility is a very powerful tool.”

Shafer agrees.

“Honest scientists admit their mistakes because accurate reports by scientists and peer-reviewed journals that publish science sine qua non The meaning of “science” is indispensable in this field.

Both Oransky and Caulfield pointed to its importance media literacyincluding critical thinking skillsto prevent the spread of misinformation.

Their offerings include:

• Remember that science is complex with few yes or no answers.

• An immediate recommendation to start or stop doing X based on a single study is rarely evidence-based.

• Consider how scientists are under pressure to quickly produce studies that are immediately relevant and generate scientific hype.

• Because no study is perfect, the most reliable findings are supported by multiple studies that continue to investigate over time.

“The more evidence there is that a news article or a TikTok video or a government statement is included, the more I believe it, especially if there’s some nuance and evidence of ‘things we don’t know here,'” Oransky said.

Despite the challenges, Oransky said he still believes the scientific method is the best way to better understand the world and get closer to the truth.

“I just think we need to take a long, hard look at this process and improve it.”