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Springer Nature has removed two studies by Max Planck

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Re: Springer Nature has removed two studies by Max Planck

#41

Post by ACCount37 »

dpoloncsak wrote: post #33
dieselgate wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fees to publish in journals for authors/labs are insane too.

I'm not familiar here, but if both the publishers and readers are unhappy, why do these services still exist? Is it the 'prestige' of being published with some of these guys? Or do you need to be published for xyz reasons? Seems like, in 2026, we can have direct publishing without the need of these services? Is it the infra, like query tools and such, that prevent a migration away? edit: I'm not going to reply to eve…

Publishing is how scientists get their street cred. Thus, the scientists themselves want to publish in big name journals to up their rep - hitting something like Nature is major coup. And then they can convert their standing in the big science gang to things like research grants, commercial projects, academic tenures, etc.

If you don't care about how science street cred works, nothing stops you from just throwing your papers up on arxiv. But then you get no publishing rep. And no visibility either. A big name journal in a given field gets eyes on your paper by default - but in the pits of arxiv, if you don't put your work out there yourself in the circles, no one will see it.

Re: Springer Nature has removed two studies by Max Planck

#43

Post by morelandjs »

stncls wrote: post #14
bstsb wrote: post #6

> […] the publisher posted a blank white page with the cryptic phrase, “This article has been withdrawn due to article violation.”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

Oh 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.

I published in Nature Physics and the copy-editing process was quite embarrassing, to the point where we had to repeatedly nag them to stop them from making the manuscript presentation worse.

To be clear, I’m not talking about subjective style issues, I mean conforming to their own spec and avoiding careless bugs.

All remaining work fell on the backs of the physics referees. I’m not sure what value Springer provided from an editorial standpoint. It was disappointing to say the least after all that hard work.

Re: Springer Nature has removed two studies by Max Planck

#44

Post by fhdkweig »

tcp_handshaker wrote: post #23
bstsb wrote: post #6

> […] 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

To be fair, the Springer empty PDF paper for $39.95, has zero errors, and zero plagiarism, so it is above the bar of their other paywalled proceedings papers.

Even emptiness can be plagiarized. See Cage's 4'33"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/4%E2%80%B233%E2%80%B3#Plagiari...

Re: Springer Nature has removed two studies by Max Planck

#46

Post by fhdkweig »

boscillator wrote: post #20

> 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.

I think this is a good example of Kafkaesque.

Re: Springer Nature has removed two studies by Max Planck

#47

Post by Noumenon72 »

fhdkweig wrote: post #44
tcp_handshaker wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be fair, the Springer empty PDF paper for $39.95, has zero errors, and zero plagiarism, so it is above the bar of their other paywalled proceedings papers.

Even emptiness can be plagiarized. See Cage's 4'33" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/4%E2%80%B233%E2%80%B3#Plagiari...

That page says that eight years after the supposed lawsuit "Batt admitted that the alleged legal dispute had been a publicity stunt and that he had actually only made a donation of £1,000 to the John Cage Foundation."[1] I guess that he plagiarized it is sure even if the copyright claim was not litigated.

1. https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-hampshire-11964995

Re: Springer Nature has removed two studies by Max Planck

#48

Post by mijoharas »

> 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.

Re: Springer Nature has removed two studies by Max Planck

#49

Post by jgraham »

bluGill wrote: post #19
raverbashing wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah this seems like a fundamentally anecdotal evidence, if bugs are splatting less on his car windshield

Worse 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.

We can't draw conclusions from that study because it's been retracted on the basis that data has been faked.

On the other hand there are other similar studies that reach similar conclusions, and specifically try to control for aerodynamics e.g. [1] which says

> The weak positive relationship between vehicle registration year and splat rate suggests that newer vehicles are more efficient at sampling insects than older vehicles.

i.e. they saw more insects on newer cars compared to older ones in the same time period.

In general ecology studies aren't like lab physics, you can't control every possible confounding variable; the systems are too complicated and studies ex-situ have their own limitations. But refusing to engage with the data we do have because it's not perfect isn't going to help you make better decisions, and doesn't represent some moral high ground.

[1] https://cdn.buglife.org.uk/2022/05/Bugs-Matter-2021-National...

Re: Springer Nature has removed two studies by Max Planck

#50

Post by NopIdoN »

khurs wrote: post #13

Link to site: 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."

What's a "tenfold decrease"?
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