Study claiming ChatGPT improves student learning retracted by Springer Nature nearly one year after publication due to discrepancies in analysis

Springer Nature retracted a meta-analysis published in Humanities & Social Sciences Communications on May 6, 2025, that claimed ChatGPT has a large positive impact on student learning performance, moderately positive impact on learning perception, and fosters higher-order thinking. The publisher cited discrepancies in the analysis and lack of confidence in the conclusions.

The retracted paper analyzed results from 51 previous research studies to quantify the effect of ChatGPT on students' learning across experimental groups using ChatGPT and control groups that did not. Experts questioned whether sufficient high-quality studies on ChatGPT and learning could have been conducted in the roughly two and a half years since OpenAI released ChatGPT in November 2022.

Despite retraction, the paper accumulated 262 citations in Springer Nature peer-reviewed journals and 504 total citations from peer-reviewed and non-peer-reviewed sources. It also attracted nearly half a million readers and ranked in the 99th percentile for journal articles in attention score.