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Titles warning people to throw out their black plastic kitchen utensils live, as well as social media posts warning of “secret toxins” in your kitchen.

Less prominent? AND correction according to a peer-reviewed study those titles were based on.

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

But there was a math error when the study authors calculated the risk — and it was less than order of magnitude.

The authors said yes to regret a mistakebut it “does not affect the overall conclusion of the paper,” since it was part of an example used to compare exposure levels to add context, not a core finding.

“The key thing our study does is provide evidence that when toxic flame retardants are used in electronics, they can make their way into household products where they are not needed or expected,” said Megan Liu of the Seattle environmental group Toxic-Free Future, who co-authored the study.

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

While media coverage of the study has often focused on what individuals can do, such as discarding black plastic spatulas, Liu said the ultimate solution is more regulation.

Although regrettable, errors do occur, including in peer-reviewed studies. They can range from a tipfeller or miscalculation that gets corrected, to mistakes so big that the paper is retracted, to the rare but outright fraud. The promise of the scientific process is that by presenting the work questioning othersall problems will be fixed in time.

The problem is that it takes time—and the resulting fixes rarely get as much public attention as the original mistakes, the magazine’s editors say.

Tim Caulfield, author The illusion of security: What you don’t know and why it mattersand a professor in the Faculty of Law and School of Public Health at the University of Alberta, studies the distortion of facts and information.

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

Fraud is allowed to run rampant

Perhaps no greater shadow has been cast by a retracted paper than Andrew Wakefield’s bogus and discredited 1998 study on what he claimed was a link between the measles, mumps, rubella (MMR) vaccine and autism.

The study is finally retracted by the Lancet journal 2010, following subsequent studies and an investigation by regulators that found Wakefield “irresponsible and dishonest”.

But that was 12 years after its publication, allowing misinformation to dominate popular culture.

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“It took too long for him to retire,” Caulfield said. “Withdrawals, unless they are made quickly and clearly communicated, can take on a political spin so that only withdrawal becomes a badge of honor.”

Swift action to withdraw is important to maintain public confidence and ensure that the scientific literature is as little contaminated as possible, he said.

Ivan Oransky, co-founder of Retraction Watch, a website that tracks journal errors, who teaches medical journalism at New York University, said because Wakefield’s study it took so long be withdrawn, “the lie is allowed to fester and is allowed to inform public thinking. We see that now, of course, with RFK Jr.”

Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who could be the Secretary of Health in the administration of President-elect Donald Trump, questions, for example, if vaccines caused more harm than good.

“Wakefield’s paper may be the most consistently fraudulent, completely false paper, ever published,” said Dr. Steven Shafer, a Stanford University anesthesiologist and clinical pharmacologist who was editor-in-chief of the medical journal Anesthesia and Analgesia.

Shafer and other doctors see further injuries and consequences from Wakefield’s withdrawal, including measles vaccination rates that he collapsed headlong after publication.

Admitting honest mistakes

To be clear, there are no allegations of fraud in the black plastic study and it has only been corrected, not retracted.

When honest mistakes happen, Oransky said science needs to normalize accepting legitimate mistakes and championing the behavior. “Humility is a pretty powerful tool.”

Shafer agrees.

“Honest scientists admit mistakes, because reporting by scientists and peer-reviewed journals that publish science is accurate sine qua non of science”, which means that it is necessary for this field.

Both Oransky and Caulfield pointed to the importance media literacyincluding critical thinking skillsto suppress the spread of disinformation.

Their suggestions include:

• Remember that science is complicated with few ‘yes’ or ‘no’ answers.

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

• Note that scientists are under pressure to quickly produce research that is immediately relevant, which fuels scientific hype.

• Since no study is perfect, the most reliable findings are supported by multiple studies that stand up to scrutiny over time.

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

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

“I just think we need to take a long, hard look at that process and make it better.”