On Newtonian singularities in higher derivative gravity models

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We consider the problem of Newtonian singularity in the wide class of higher derivative gravity models, including the ones which are renormalizable and super-renormalizable at the quantum level. The simplest version of the singularity-free theory has four derivatives and is pretty well-known. We argue that in all cases of local higher-derivative theories, when the poles of the propagator are real and simple, the singularities disappear due to the cancellation of contributions from scalar and tensor massive modes.