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Editor's Note: Retraction of article containing fabricated quotations

arstechnica.com

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Re: Editor's Note: Retraction of article containing fabricated quotations

#121

Post by robocat »

bojan wrote: post #95
water-data-dude wrote: post #83

Benj Edwards, one of the authors, accepted responsibility in a bluesky post[0]. He lists some extenuating circumstances[1], but takes full responsibility. Time will tell if it's a one-off thing or not I guess. [0] https://bsky.app/profile/benjedwards.com/post/3mewgow6ch22p [1] your mileage may vary on how much you believe it and how much slack you want to cut him if you do

The bigger problem is that he felt the need to work while ill in bed, with very little sleep and sick with fever. Makes me wonder about Ars Technica's company culture.

> felt the need to work while ill in bed, with very little sleep and sick with fever

You are assuming that...

He says he currently has a fever.

But was he sick when he wrote the article? That is not so clear.

Re: Editor's Note: Retraction of article containing fabricated quotations

#122

Post by strken »

andrewflnr wrote: post #12

People put a lot of weight on blame-free post-mortems and not punishing people who make "mistakes", but I believe that has to stop at the level of malice. Falsifying quotes is malice. Fire the malicious party or everything else you say is worthless.

Blameless post-mortems work really well when you use them to fix process issues. In this case, you'd identify issues like "not all quotes are fact checked because our submissions to editorial staff don't require sources and the checklist doesn't require fact checks", "the journalist worked while sick because we were understaffed", "nothing should ever be copy-pasted from an LLM", etc.

Re: Editor's Note: Retraction of article containing fabricated quotations

#123

Post by dmitrygr »

This is something you don’t see a lot in journalism nowadays. Multiple publications have been caught in multiple provable lies or inaccuracies over the last few years, and this is the first official retraction I’ve seen. I tip my hat to the ars team.

Re: Editor's Note: Retraction of article containing fabricated quotations

#124

Post by Barrin92 »

skybrian wrote: post #119
vor_ wrote: post #101

Several of the subscribers in the comments are so eager to praise Ars for "catching" the error and being honest by retracting the article, as if that's not an expected journalistic standard. They're so happy to have a reason NOT to be upset. This wasn't even caught by Ars or any of its readers. The guy being misquoted had to sign up and post a comment about it.

I'm happy that they fixed it, checked for any similar errors, and promised that they would improve their processes to try to prevent it from happening again. This is pretty much what I expect when an organization makes a mistake. Many organizations don't do as well.

the apology for the mistake is fine but it is expected journalistic practice to hand an article to a fact checker before it goes out who will quite literally make sure names, dates, quotes and so on are authentic.

I thought of Ars Technica as a pretty decent publication, now I am wondering if they actually check what they publish.

Re: Editor's Note: Retraction of article containing fabricated quotations

#125

Post by overfeed »

vor_ wrote: post #107
sva_ wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Really refreshing to see someone owning up to their mistake, that is something rare nowadays.

What alternative action could he possibly take? He's owning up to something indisputable.

Not say anything at all.

Re: Editor's Note: Retraction of article containing fabricated quotations

#126

Post by shadowgovt »

laurex wrote: post #118

Remember the old days when journalists would be excommunicated for plagarism and/or making things up? Some of those folks must be like "I was just too early..."

Remember the old days when people paid for news?

Ars is owned by Conde Nast, which had to let go of its HQ in 2024. I suspect they don't have a plan to replace a journalist like Benj if they axe him. And it's not like readers are going to hold them accountable.

Re: Editor's Note: Retraction of article containing fabricated quotations

#127

Post by Jordan-117 »

laurex wrote: post #118

Remember the old days when journalists would be excommunicated for plagarism and/or making things up? Some of those folks must be like "I was just too early..."

The clear difference between this and Stephen Glass-style confabulation is intent. There's no indication Edwards knowingly, deliberately invented quotes. It was a clumsy mistake.

Re: Editor's Note: Retraction of article containing fabricated quotations

#128

Post by Jordan-117 »

QuadrupleA wrote: post #70

Glib observation, but this sounds quite generic and AI-written.

Elsewhere I've seen a post from the author talking about how his old articles hit so many of Wikipedia's identified signs of AI-generated text. As somebody who's own style hits many of those same stylistic/rhetorical techniques, I definitely sympathize.

Re: Editor's Note: Retraction of article containing fabricated quotations

#129

Post by mzajc »

robocat wrote: post #121
bojan wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The bigger problem is that he felt the need to work while ill in bed, with very little sleep and sick with fever. Makes me wonder about Ars Technica's company culture.

> felt the need to work while ill in bed, with very little sleep and sick with fever You are assuming that... He says he currently has a fever. But was he sick when he wrote the article? That is not so clear.

He was, it's in the first paragraph

> I have been sick with COVID all week /../, while working from bed with a fever and very little sleep, I unintentionally made a serious journalistic error in an article about Scott Shambaugh.

Re: Editor's Note: Retraction of article containing fabricated quotations

#130

Post by giobox »

dmitrygr wrote: post #123

This is something you don’t see a lot in journalism nowadays. Multiple publications have been caught in multiple provable lies or inaccuracies over the last few years, and this is the first official retraction I’ve seen. I tip my hat to the ars team.

There are official retractions in reputable publications almost every day. Lots of major publications have an entire section of their website devoted to it:

https://www.nytimes.com/section/corrections

https://www.wsj.com/news/types/corrections

etc etc. Many of them include the retraction or correction in the following print edition, if they have one, as well.

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