Max Planck Slapped With Two Paper Retractions By Suspected Rogue Algorithm (science.org) 21
Max Planck won 1918's Nobel Prize for physics. Yet two of his papers were retracted — a move now being criticized by Yves Gingras, a historian of physics at the University of Quebec and Mahdi Khelfaoui, a fellow historian of science at UQ Trois-Rivières. Science reports:
The papers, both quietly retracted in 2011, originally appeared in the early 1940s in Naturwissenschaften, a German journal now owned by publishing giant Springer Nature. After some sleuthing, Khelfaoui determined one of the Planck pieces, a philosophical essay from 1942 titled "Sinn und Grenzen der exakten Wissenschaft" ("Meaning and Limits of Exact Science"), about how to achieve certainty in scientific knowledge, had also appeared in two other journals and been reprinted twice in books. Repackaging the same work multiple times is considered "self-plagiarism" and frowned upon today — the practice produces copyright conflicts and inflates scholars' publication records. The Naturwissenschaften site gives "copyright violation" as the reason for the retraction.
Yet publishing identical material in multiple journals was widespread before the internet. "Science was more fragmented" then, Khelfaoui says. "You wanted different audiences ... to have access to your work." The practice was especially common for luminaries like Planck. Albert Einstein did the same (but escaped retractions). Springer Nature's "anachronistic" application of modern standards to a 1942 paper "distort[s] the historical record," Gingras and Khelfaoui argue in a preprint posted last month on arXiv. Any concerns about copyright violations are largely moot anyway: Because Planck died in 1947, his works are in the public domain in most countries.
Gingras was especially incensed that 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 Instead, the publisher posted a blank white page with the cryptic phrase, "This article has been withdrawn due to article violation."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. Suzanne Scarlata, a chemist and biochemist at the Worcester Polytechnic Institute and editor-in-chief of The Science of Nature, as Naturwissenschaften is now known, had not heard about the retractions before being contacted for this story... Scarlata suspects Springer Nature's internal policing software removed the paper and posted the retraction notice unilaterally, without human supervision: "I think it just happened with their algorithm," she says. "It's a mistake they should probably rectify."
A second Planck paper was apparently removed because its response to a 1940 paper had used an identical title.
Thanks to our long-time Slashdot reader He Who Has No Name for sharing the article.
Yet publishing identical material in multiple journals was widespread before the internet. "Science was more fragmented" then, Khelfaoui says. "You wanted different audiences ... to have access to your work." The practice was especially common for luminaries like Planck. Albert Einstein did the same (but escaped retractions). Springer Nature's "anachronistic" application of modern standards to a 1942 paper "distort[s] the historical record," Gingras and Khelfaoui argue in a preprint posted last month on arXiv. Any concerns about copyright violations are largely moot anyway: Because Planck died in 1947, his works are in the public domain in most countries.
Gingras was especially incensed that 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. Suzanne Scarlata, a chemist and biochemist at the Worcester Polytechnic Institute and editor-in-chief of The Science of Nature, as Naturwissenschaften is now known, had not heard about the retractions before being contacted for this story... Scarlata suspects Springer Nature's internal policing software removed the paper and posted the retraction notice unilaterally, without human supervision: "I think it just happened with their algorithm," she says. "It's a mistake they should probably rectify."
A second Planck paper was apparently removed because its response to a 1940 paper had used an identical title.
Thanks to our long-time Slashdot reader He Who Has No Name for sharing the article.
Promoting knowledge. (Score:5, Funny)
And will no doubt sue anyone infringing their copyright of it.
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All those in the know are heavily into OpenAI now.
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But they have a blank-et copyright on such.
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Cue well-funded senators screaming "But you're destroying the creative industries !" and trying to create legislation to stop this outrage.
Springer (Score:3)
This is completely stupid. There can't be a copyright violation obviously.
or as Max Planck wrote "Aus nichts läßt sich nichts folgern." - No conclusion can be drawn from nothing.
Thanksfully the Max Planck society supported the Berlin Declaration on Open Access.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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This is the problem with automation from AI. (Score:2)
We're sorry, the computer says you don't exist. You can't pay for that food.
Re: This is the problem with automation from AI. (Score:3)
Pretty sure this was hand crafted algorithm if it happened in 2011.
It's more of a lesson in the difficulty of communicating business logic when creating a project (which will obviously impact AI, but can cause problems for people too).
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While 'AI" has gotten a lot of pop attention latetly, the actual systems (and the problems they cause) are much older.... 2011 is _WELL_ within the timeframe someone can blame 'AI'. People have been trying to turn over these kinds of processes to various models since at least the 80s.
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There was actually an incident of this some years ago. A pensioner (not the USA, UK, or similar) was declared dead by mistake. So they stopped his payments, went to take his housing away, etc...
He ended up being the most polite thief, just for life necessities.
They eventually tried to arrest him. Except the computer wouldn't accept the entry because dead. Fingerprints were for a dead man.
Couldn't hold a normal court case because dead.
It took like a year to fix, and they decided to drop the charges and s
It annoys me so much (Score:2)
Fuck revisionist historians (Score:2)
Applying today's standards retroactively to work published decades ago is stupid beyond belief. Relying on AI that does this kind of shit is evil.Then again, we're talking about Springer, so both stupid and evil are entirely expected. So, fuck Springer.
Quantum Papers (Score:2)
These can be published or accessed, but never both at the same time.