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Springer Nature has removed two studies by Max Planck
- josefritzishere 3mo agoThe world has gone mad.
- akudha 3mo agoSpringer Nature is nevertheless still selling the empty PDF for $39.95 lol, getting paid for nothing. Highest levels of capitalism
- ashenke 3mo ago> Springer Nature deviated from the normal practice of merely slapping the word RETRACTED across the digital version of the paper while still allowing scholars to read the text. Instead, the publisher posted a blank white page with the cryptic phrase, “This article has been withdrawn due to article violation.” Springer Nature is nevertheless still selling the empty PDF for $39.95. The system is broken
- Quarrel 3mo agoand, as the articles points out, it is literally out of copyright. For profit journals need to die.
- otherme123 3mo agoYou know what is even worse? A lot of what is paid come from public grants and not-for-profit grants. Reviewers are not paid. Editors are mostly other researchers. Authors are required to put the paper in ready-to-process.format. Thus public money funelled into journal pockets. There is almost zero reasons why the governments or NIH-like institutions don't have their paper repository.
- dotancohen 3mo ago> There is almost zero reasons why the governments or NIH-like institutions don't have their paper repository. Prestige. Though I do agree that prestige is almost zero reason.
- kingleopold 3mo ago"The purpose of a system is what it does" it's designed that way.
- Henchman21 3mo agoDownvoting this comment doesn’t make it less true. Most everyone and everything has been captured by the ultimate cynicism of Capitalism: if I don’t do it someone else will, so might as well put the money in my pocket right?? I agree with @kingleopod — this system is designed to do what it is doing: keep knowledge private and keep profits high. Full stop.
- genxy 3mo agoAgain, the system is working as intended. Capitalism is a wonderful hack on so many levels.
- segmondy 3mo agoWell, I can't be mad if I ever get accused if Plank has no chance.
- bluGill 3mo agoPlank is dead and so cannot defend himself. You are at least alive and have a potential to do something (what or if it will work is an open question). Plank is very famous. If this happens to you, but 50 years after you die: odds are you are not famous and nobody will notice.
- bstsb 3mo ago> […] the publisher posted a blank white page with the cryptic phrase, “This article has been withdrawn due to article violation.” Springer Nature is nevertheless still selling the empty PDF for $39.95. completely unsurprised, given the state of online papers publishing. if you don’t have an subscription or aren’t an organisation member, the fees are insane
- stncls 3mo agoOh even if your org has a subscription, the fees are insane. You just don't see them. Things are slowly changing but I can't wait for this parasitic business model to collapse for good.
- jrumbut 3mo agoWhat's most bothersome is there is work for them to do. How about assigning a real copy editor with subject matter expertise? How about publishing open source libraries that automatically validate and output visualizations for their formats? How about hosting multimedia supplements? It would not be difficult at all to earn the money they charge. There is so much room for creativity and innovation and adding value in scientific publishing.
- vitally3643 3mo agoThat sounds an awful lot like "costs" which seriously compromises the "free profit" model. Why pay money to make a better product when you can pay zero money for a worse product and no change in subscriptions? What are your customers gonna do, go get the paper somewhere else?
- MostlyStable 3mo ago20 years ago, that argument would make sense. They had no competition and could do what they wanted. As an earlier comment stated: that is starting to change, and if they wait until open competitors are fully established, then it will be too late. Now is the time for them to realize that their parasitic business model is coming to an end and they need to change if they want to survive long term. They can of course choose short term profits over long term viability, which wouldn't be all that surprising, but that changes the explanation from "more profits" to "short-sightedness/incompetence"
- p_j_w 3mo ago> Springer Nature is nevertheless still selling the empty PDF for $39.95. I wish I could say such behavior was shocking. Everything Springer touches turns to shit.
- zephen 3mo ago> “detailed information about specific retractions is usually confidential and can only be shared with the relevant authors.” Time for a séance.
- arrowsmith 3mo agoMax Planck published the same paper in multiple journals in the 1940s, which was common practice at the time. He also published a second unrelated paper that happened to have the same title as the paper it was a response to. In 2011 both papers were retracted from their journals' archives, most likely because a bot incorrectly flagged them for plagiarism. Saved you a click.
- chrismorgan 3mo agoYou missed the two absurdities: 1. Springer Nature are happily selling an empty PDF for $39.95. 2. Springer Nature responded that they’re not going to tell you why they retracted it, because retraction details are normally only shared with the author (who in this case died almost 80 years ago).
- khurs 3mo agoLink to site: https://retractionwatch.com https://retractionwatch.com One of the recent posts: "A study claiming a tenfold decrease in bugs splattered on evolutionary biologist Anders Møller’s windshield over two decades has been retracted."
- raverbashing 3mo agoYeah this seems like a fundamentally anecdotal evidence, if bugs are splatting less on his car windshield
- bluGill 3mo agoWorse than anecdotal - even if there is real measured data: aerodynamics of windshields will have changed and have an effect and so we still cannot draw conclusions from this. Only if the experiment is more controlled (that is the same car driving on the same roads at the same speeds at the same time) could we draw a conclusion.
- dmoy 3mo agoSame roads doesn't even control. If you lived in a town that e.g. changed the very local environment (say drained one specific swamp), the nearby roads my have less bugs for a very uninteresting reason
- shagie 3mo agoThat is the interesting reason. While the retraction brings into question the anecdotal evidence for the windscreen phenomenon ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windshield_phenomenon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windshield_phenomenon ), there are other studies with other sampling approaches that support the global insect population collapse ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decline_in_insect_populations https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decline_in_insect_populations ).
- bluGill 3mo ago
- mbreese 3mo agoTo me, this seems like Science dunking on Nature (the journals). It’s interesting, but only a story because Nature is involved.
- boscillator 3mo ago> detailed information about specific retractions is usually confidential and can only be shared with the relevant authors. Good luck sharing that information with Max Planck. It's amazing how robotically humans can act sometimes. I suppose this could be an AI or automated response, but it's just as likely it's someone following the letter of the law without using any critical thought.
- fhdkweig 3mo agoI think this is a good example of Kafkaesque.
- poizan42 3mo agoI really wish they would have asked the representative to confirm that they can only share detailed information with the skeletal remains of an author who died 78 years ago. Not that I think it would make any difference, but it would force the representative to acknowledge the absurdity of the situation.
- robertlagrant 3mo agoWhy would you need to pay $40 for a PDF of a paper published almost a hundred years ago? What makes the paper not public domain?
- seanhunter 3mo agoYou don't. It is public domain. You pay that if you want to get it from them. This is the same as I can get a free pdf of "Linear algebra done right" from Sheldon Axler's website but if I want to get it from Springer I pay $50 or whatever it is.
- robertlagrant 3mo agoThat is a very confusing state of affairs!
- ChrisMarshallNY 3mo agoRepackaging and selling free data is a very old business model. In many cases, it's value-added, because the bundler may also do some curation and interpretation. Not sure that's what's happening, here, though...
- esterna 3mo agoYou can also buy licenses to use AV1, a royalty-free codec.
- deleted 3mo ago[deleted]
- jszymborski 3mo agoThe acronym for the University of Quebec at Montreal is UQàM not UQ :P
- deleted 3mo ago[deleted]
- dcrazy 3mo agoOne researcher was at UQAM, the other was at UQTR. Are both not considered part of UQ?
- dmbche 3mo agoNo, both are separate universities, although some universities also have satelite campuses (UDeM (montreal) has multiple). Edit0: Although UQ is a group of 10 universities that are public, they are not a single entity.
- dcrazy 3mo agoThat sounds like the UC or SUNY systems. UCSB, UCLA, etc are all separate institutions with separate missions, but it’s totally normal to say “UC Berkeley” or “UC Santa Cruz.”
- deleted 3mo ago[deleted]
- adrian_b 3mo agoThe "à" between Québec and Montréal should have "accent grave", not "accent aigu".
- jszymborski 3mo agoAs a Montréaler I am ashamed, fixed it.
- Lapsa 3mo ago[dead]
- jdw64 3mo agoI always feel that people want one central place to prove their abilities, but when that central place becomes corrupted, it's hard to break away from it. Because the authority of that place feels as if it's tied to your own authority
- nyeah 3mo agolol "self plagiarism". Max Planck got an "extra publication." Counting papers is death. Everything connected with it is death. This is Max fucking Planck, who gave us the photon. We're judging him according to today's "standards." He's "failing." Ok. So be it. We'll get what we incentivize.
- vanattab 3mo ago"Springer Nature is nevertheless still selling the empty PDF for $39.95." LOL, what a world we are building.
- mijoharas 3mo ago> Representatives from Springer Nature declined to comment, beyond saying that “detailed information about specific retractions is usually confidential and can only be shared with the relevant authors.” Was it a bot commenting as well? That's a hilariously tone-deaf response. Guess we'd better bust out the ouija board to ask max plank himself.
- the_af 3mo agoI'm sorry, communicating with ghosts is against Springer Nature policy. This isn't a disreputable publication like Séance Monthly!
- Artoooooor 3mo agoDo I understand correctly that publishing the same paper in multiple journals is considered self-plagiarism? Who in the name of the great monopoly invented such name for that?
- bborud 3mo agoThe same morons who think that re-using something you have written before in academic work without quoting yourself is (self-)plagiarism for which you should be sanctioned? (Yes, they are morons because no reasonable person would think this is fair. You need convoluted nonsense arguments to justify this)
- MengerSponge 3mo agoIt's bad manners and a waste of people's time and attention to present previously published work as novel. Repeating a phrase or two in a document's introduction isn't going to raise flags from any serious people, but copying data, analysis, or large swaths of text? That's a paddlin'.
- deleted 3mo ago[deleted]
- rowanG077 3mo agoThat makes no sense, either people don't know about the previous work and thus it has clear value. Or they do and they can easily skip it. Beside for a lot of work it be great if you could just literally copy and paste fragments if your previous work to deepen out some reasoning.
- vladms 3mo agoMany forums have/had policies about not doing cross posting (in different categories). I find this similar. Yes, maybe from the "plagiarism" angle is not very relevant, but I would prefer not to have a system in which people try to "flood" repositories (journals, etc) with the same thing over and over. People looking for new information, people reviewing will get most of the burden to "keep things clean" while for the poster that is not a problem.
- xorgun 3mo ago[dead]
- linkregister 3mo agoAn algorithm did it? Or was the author of apparent sloppily-written machine instructions the actor?
- _exvi 3mo agoI wrote a whole chapter about Max Planck and his challenges and his legacy in my book "What is light? Wave theory of light and origins of ether in science" check it out if you are interested
- psychoslave 3mo agoSo, greed that devoured scientific publication, that's why. Unfortunately, that's nothing new.
- ck2 3mo agoha if Max Planck was proven wrong it would be as bad as proving Einstein wrong it would break quantum physics * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_mechanics#History https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_mechanics#History
- wolfi1 3mo agothe Germans have a word for that: "vertrottelt" (in English it is just translated as "stupid", but it conveys much more meaning than stupid)
- BadBadJellyBean 3mo agoWell I didn't see any counter evidence by Planck so Springer Nature must be right. Otherwise he should defend himself! \s
- thayne 3mo ago> Repackaging the same work multiple times is considered “self-plagiarism” and frowned upon today In other words, publishers want a monopoly on what they publish and take the copy rights away from the actual authors.
- 0xAstro 3mo ago> Springer Nature deviated from the normal practice of merely slapping the word RETRACTED across the digital version of the paper while still allowing scholars to read the text. Instead, the publisher posted a blank white page with the cryptic phrase, “This article has been withdrawn due to article violation.” Springer Nature is nevertheless still selling the empty PDF for $39.95. If someone else did this, it would've been called scam.
- shevy-java 3mo agoAgreed. The simplest explanation, though, is probably that they used a low quality software tool here. Shame on those software developers who have written it in the first place - they also supported censorship here.
- burgerone 3mo agoYou can't shame the execution, you can shame the order
- soraminazuki 3mo agos/If some else did this/If ordinary citizens did this/ Wealthy companies getting away with fraud is unfortunately business as usual. https://consumerrights.wiki/w/Main_Page https://consumerrights.wiki/w/Main_Page
- shevy-java 3mo agoGingras is correct - Springer here tries to censor. I believe the only way to respond to this is by removing Springer completely. Science can not survive when private companies such as Springer begin to censor science, in particular old science. > Springer Nature is nevertheless still selling the empty PDF for $39.95. And this is also outrageous. Not only do they censor but they charge people for that. I believe states need to build up a basic scientific work, in particular for older papers. It can not be that private entities control access to information here. > Scarlata suspects Springer Nature’s internal policing software removed the paper That's even worse. So an internal tool decides what to censor. Imagine if all access to old articles were controlled by private greedy companies that run auto-tools, AI, to censor stuff. We need to retaliate here in a way to ensure open access to science perpetually. > Representatives from Springer Nature declined to comment, beyond saying that“detailed information about specific retractions is usually confidential and can only be shared with the relevant authors.” Max is dead, so this is a cop out. But even aside from this, it is incorrect. Springer has a responsibility to everyone else here. If they censor something they abused our trust. Such articles should not be held in private hands. The whole idea of taxpayers paying for something and then Springer, Elsevier etc.. siphoning that money by their paywall, is outrageous. Now that they also censor information, it is time to take all their privileges completely away. Either way the Streisand effect will now kick in. Springer has become famous for trying to cancel Planck. That injustice can not stand, no matter if automatic tools used it or not (which also shows that these tools are buggy - shame on Springer for employing buggy tools leading to vile censorship methods).
- nijave 3mo agoI don't know much about academia but it seems journals should be cooperatively edited and managed by universities rather than fully privitized. Ideally with an off ramp into public archives after a period of time.
- Sweepi 3mo ago> In November 1940, philosopher Aloys Müller criticized Planck’s views in a Naturwissenschaften piece titled “Naturwissenschaft und reale Außenwelt” (“Natural Science and the Real External World”). A month later, Planck responded in print—and used the exact same title. This, Gingras and Khelfaoui suspect, caused Springer Nature’s copyright bot to retract the paper as plagiarism decades later, even though the contents of the two essays differ markedly. > The debate over the Copenhagen interpretation remains active today, which explains why Gingras and Khelfaoui find the retractions so troubling: A key scientist’s views on an important controversy have been memory holed. > Both Scarlata and Gingras are concerned that papers by less prominent scientists have disappeared as well without anyone realizing. At a minimum, Gingras wants Planck’s papers restored. “Whoever did it, I don’t care,” he says, “just put them [back] in the database. Intellectually, it’s not acceptable.” Thanks, copyright bots.
- dreamcompiler 3mo agoThis is what invariably happens when you give bots control of important day-to-day business operations: The bot makes some horrendous mistake and then there's no human being around who has the authority, the access, and the knowledge to both revert the bot's decision and make sure that the bot doesn't just replay the error at a later date.
- nijave 3mo agoPrivatizing gains, socializing loses Bots and automation aren't inherently bad, but often times the motivation is pure cost savings for the company and users pay the price. A more rational design could have a periodic human auditing process, appeal/reversal process, and a public audit/action log for clarity. However, that's going to eat into the savings of automating the whole thing so why bother
- hn_throwaway_99 3mo agoWhile it seems pretty obvious to me that this was an algorithm run amok, I think it's absolutely ghastly that they would retract papers algorithmically without human intervention in the first place. Retraction is a major deal, and would/could do significant harm to an author (obviously in this particular case I think Max's reputation will be fine). The article states: > Representatives from Springer Nature declined to comment, beyond saying that “detailed information about specific retractions is usually confidential and can only be shared with the relevant authors.” but I'm pretty sure they didn't contact Max Planck, nor his estate, before retracting the articles. I would be absolutely incensed if I were a living author and had one of my papers retracted without the chance to defend myself. I think this article encapsulates an ever growing frustration that is only exploding with the rise of AI - we're turning more and more decisions over to black boxes that have no accountability and no easy path for rectification when things go wrong.
- alansaber 3mo agoArticle was probably flagged as AI written /s
- BrandoElFollito 3mo agoJournals are scams, sustained by scientists. All this paid by our taxes. Scientists decided that other scientists will be ranked by coolness (where they publish). And that this is a strict process. Except when the scientist is a celebrity, such as Benaventiste and his water memory. Too cool to reject. Hopefully this will change as information gets more and more decentralized.
- pfdietz 3mo agoMaybe they should stop curating this old content that is no longer under copyright. And maybe Google should make scans of all those old journals available.
- janerosas 3mo ago[dead]
- bigbuppo 3mo agoI'm beginning to think letting one company control access to the vast majority of scientific knowledge may not be a good thing.
- thescriptkiddie 3mo agowait, springer as in axel? the guy who was in the nazi party?
- ColinWright 3mo agoQuoting from the article: Representatives from Springer Nature declined to comment, beyond saying that “detailed information about specific retractions is usually confidential and can only be shared with the relevant authors.” So the only person with whom Springer can discuss why the papers have been withdrawn is ... Plank. Well ... good luck with that.