In the world of scientific publishing there are many reasons why a paper can be retracted, but generally there is an obvious and clearly communicated reason for doing so. Thus when [Yves Gingras] – a historian of physics – and [Mahdi Khelfaoui] – a colleague – noticed recently that two 1940s papers by [Max Planck] had been quite recently retracted, this resulted in an eyebrow-raising double-take, before naturally publishing their investigation’s findings on arXiv.
They first became aware of this courtesy of the site Retraction Watch and their list of ‘Retractions by Nobel Prize winners‘, which had the authors do a spit-take when they saw [Max Planck] listed. This page led them to a total of two database entries, as listed above. One is for a 1940 paper, the other for a 1942 paper, only five years before [Planck]’s death.
As for the provided reasons, both articles were struck with a generic ‘copyright violation’, which at the very least seems somewhat puzzling, and started both authors of this recent investigation on their journey. What they found was less of a nefarious plot and more of an accidental black hole that had formed when scientific journals began to digitize papers.
The original journal that [Planck]’s papers were published in was absorbed like so many into Springer Nature, where an automated system then tried to sort through all the papers, including the usual detecting of copyright issues. With these papers predating the era of convenient DOIs and the more standard forms of citing related works, said automated system appears to have become rather confused and hurt these papers in its confusion.
From the side of Springer Nature there has so far been no commentary on this, and as of writing the original papers are still listed as withdrawn. Although one can still read the original scanned papers via the Internet Archive, such as here the 1940 paper, it’s disturbing to see that automated systems have apparently been let loose on these veritable archives of scientific and academic history, heedless of the damage inflicted along the way.
Although after fifteen years these two retractions were finally noticed, the more harrowing question is probably just how many papers from potentially less well-known authors were quietly scuttled. If this can happen to [Planck]’s works, it would appear that nobody is safe, including legends like [Bohr], [Einstein] and so many others.
Lol. I wonder how many articles are getting retconned on who the author was.
No one’s checking articles that are low count…just republish on arxiv…
A deep dark fear. I hope new regulation in the lines of Cyber Resilience Act will expose this kind of automated dementia as unacceptable.
They used to write the word real as “reale” now they use “reele” :( Totaly confusing for people knowing other languages like English or Spanish beforehand. There are plenty of similarly written words. Why did they change the language again ? but … how much did it cost ? and what where the benefits, again ?
I think there is a misunderstanding here. The German words “real” and “reell” were not changed from “reale” and “reele” by any spelling reform. In fact, “real” and “reell” are different words with different meanings and have coexisted in German for a very long time.
There’s the saying about not attributing to malice what can be attributed to stupidity. With the AI companies’ actions I feel more and more inclined to make the first attribution.
That’s the style nowadays.
It is the style because otherwise it wouldn’t get done.
But to the articles point, (I am camping on DanielH’s thread because he posted the quote, and I have comments about the quote), automated systems are the only way this will get done. People like to rail about corporations using automation, instead of people, yet in all the years of digitisation, only a fraction of high-value documents have been manually digitised and manually checked. Those that have had someone willing to pay.
In your own life, when you purchase a product, when it is time to pay for shipping, which option do you choose? If they give you a choice between the shipping with permanent employees with vacation and paid health benefits, or the cheaper one with lower paid contract jobbers, which one have you chosen? (That’s a rhetorical question intended to suggest that we all make choices with our money that affect the lives of others, and of economic systems. )
I’m not sure this rises to the level of “terrifying”.
In the first case (of Max Planck), the same paper was published in multiple journals. This was acceptable practice at the time, it was a way to get your ideas out to a larger audience, but today it counts as “self plagiarism”.
I never understood why self-plagiarism was a sin. If you write a blog post essay on some topic, and later your professor asks for an essay on that exact same topic, why is it wrong to submit the blog post essay? It’s your own work, on topic, and written in your own words. Furthermore, how are you supposed to come up with a different essay on the same topic? Take a position different from the one you actually believe in? Pointlessly write the original essay using different words? And if the post is simply explaining a subject – do you have to come up with a separate mental model to explain it?
And yet, if you submit your blog post on a college application form it can get you kicked for plagiarism. And this is for HS students because they “should know better”, even though they’re still teenagers.
In the second case, (of Planck), his paper had the exact title as a paper published in the previous issue (a month prior). Planck used the duplicate title to indicate that he was adding to an ongoing debate.
There’s a modern term “presentism” which means “Judging ancient cultures or historical figures by modern moral, ethical, and social standards”. It’s sometimes applied to the Roman Empire, or the founding fathers because they had slaves. They’re bad, because they should have known slavery was wrong!
We can find modern reasons to hate historical figures quite easily, but I don’t see that practice as in any way useful.
Presentism doesn’t add to our knowledge, it only assigns value judgements to it.
We are on the same page.
“self plagiarism” is an oxymoron
if you dilute a definition too much it loses its value
I get why in some cases it can be wrong, but it shouldn’t use the same term.
“presentism”
Never heard of the term, but I’ve heard of the concept. In case of judging the US founding fathers, people ignore many facts. Such as they inherited the slaves and later freed them.
I’ve let loose a similar comment on a subreddit that is traditionally replete with moderated deletions, and I think my criticism applies here, too: An article ultimately represents an opinion (be it in good or in bad faith), and so does a moderation, a retraction and so on. Except to prevent unlawful actions (sensitive pictures, doxxing and so on), a retraction should not have the effect of making the content unaccessible or, worse, of deleting the content; rather, a clear and explanatory notice “to whom it may concern” should be put into place, right next to the publication in question.
The fact that the publisher has not found it necessary to even comment on this just goes to show how cooked we are in this timeline, where all we do is just for the sake of profit. There are apparently no causes worth fighting for.
Edit: Change “I’ve let loose” -> “Some time ago I made”. Can’t edit comments once you sent them or did I miss sth?
You can’t edit comments. Just reply to yourself with the correction and everyone will sympathize with you.
When I first read it, I was afraid it was because he had photoshopped the data.
i’m not sure how consequential Springer’s choice is here, but it’s inappropriate to construe it as ‘accidental’ or as a result of ‘confusion.’ Springer knows what they’re doing. They’re intentionally damaging things using an ‘err on the side of damage’ heuristic. They’re a bad actor and their use of automation to do bad things doesn’t change that.
I guess we’re all trying to appease Springer’s tame lawyers here most of all, but you’re probably right. Very few of us who dabble in the world of academics & science on some level feel anything other than a burning hatred and intense loathing for these ‘publishers’.
Them paywalling freely available papers from the 1930s-1960s is just another example of why scientific publishing has got such a bad rap, even when they’re not vanishing papers due to some clearly improper ‘copyright violation’ system.
The penalties for IP theft are too lax, when applied to large IP holders. From fraudulent copyright claims on YoutTube, to IP theft against “The People”. The “Happy Birthday” song comes to mind. Find some descendant, offer them some minor “Lottery Money” to give the claim credence, theft from the public domain completed.
Just recognize that intellectual “property” isn’t real and copy whatever you want. If you get banned somewhere, make a new account. Worrying about lawyers is for the big boys, not me. If someone wants to sue me, they can get my pocket lint I guess.
All this reveals is that scientific journals are not reliable archives. If something is important to you, archive it yourself! This is basic knowledge!
When AI stands for Artificial Idiocy.
“Although after fifteen years these two retractions were finally noticed, the more harrowing question is probably just how many papers from potentially less well-known authors were quietly scuttled”
All retractions done by this flawed system need to be reversed and manually reviewed. That’s the only way.
I would question the whole organization’s reliability if this is the current state of affairs. We know what you are trying to do and although it is the current flavor of the loud crowd, it will be laughed at in the future. Not that I have particular faith in any of these high minded “our truth narrative” orgs. Mainly peer review needs to be brought back to many of these fields. The pay to play journals in India and China should be red flagged and blacklisted from academia. My brother paid to have an article published on genetic mutations that is all wiki text about pod behavior of killer whales lol. Still out there :)