Editor's Note: Retraction of article containing fabricated quotations • Hacker News Board

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

#221

Post by oenton » Tue, Feb 17, 2026, 12:43 PM UTC

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.

The DOW is at 50,000! 50,000! If you get this reference (and even if you don’t), there are many alternative actions he could have taken, including not acknowledging this at all.

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

#222

Post by TomMasz » Tue, Feb 17, 2026, 8:08 PM UTC

Isn't this the sort of thing editors are supposed to catch before publication? It's good that they retracted the article and apologized to the person who was falsely quoted, but it still managed to appear before someone caught it.

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

#223

Post by adobesubmarine » Wed, Feb 18, 2026, 1:38 AM UTC

randallsquared wrote: post #160

j0057 wrote: post #9

Odd that there's no link to the retracted article. Thread on Arstechnica forum: https://arstechnica.com/civis/threads/editor%E2%80%99s-note-... The retracted article: https://web.archive.org/web/20260213194851/https://arstechni...

> Odd that there's no link to the retracted article. Well, it's retracted . That means that it shouldn't exist any more, so while they could link to the archive, it defeats the point of retracting it if they do so, right?

In academic publishing the normal way to handle a retraction is to flag the article as retracted, not delete it. Partly that's a legacy thing from print media (you can publish a notice of retraction but you can't un-publish a physical journal copy). But it's also about traceability; you don't get to pretend you never messed up by putting the article out in the first place.