[fredgrott]

Okay, I can answer this. Papers are never retracted for theory proven wrong and they are always retracted when wrong-doing is found. This is why the high level research stuff always has researchers recording their data and notes. Before computers, my exp early 1990s, We had to record everything in a notebook and sign it.

[cycomanic]

That statement is wrong. Papers do get retracted because a major innocent error is found. This often happens at the request of the author (typically with an explanation from the authors). . See the comment a bit further up for an example.

[delusional]

There's a difference between "theory proven wrong" and "proof being wrong". A finding that Theory A is wrong is still a valid finding. A wrong finding about Theory A is just a lie, it carries no value, and should thus be retracted.

[mjn]

In practice, wrong findings that aren't due to misconduct and aren't very recent are usually not retracted though. It's just considered part of the history of science that some old papers have proofs or results now known to be false. It is pretty common in mathematics, for example, for people to discover (and publish) errors they found in old proofs, without the journal going back and retracting the old proof. A famous example is Hilbert's (incorrect) sketch of a proof for the continuum hypothesis [1].

[1] https://mathoverflow.net/questions/272028/hilberts-alleged-p...