Springer Nature Takes Back Retraction of Max Planck’s Papers

The publisher Springer Nature reversed its retraction of two papers by renowned physicist and Nobel laureate Max Planck after more than a decade, based on the findings of two historians who investigated the matter, Science reported.

The papers—published in the 1940s in a German journal, Naturwissenschaften, now owned by Springer Nature—were retracted in 2011 due to “human error,” according to the publisher. Suzanne Scarlata, the current editor in chief of the journal, since renamed The Science of Nature, told Science she suspected the publisher’s internal policing software was at fault for the mistaken retractions, which Springer Nature denies.

“It appears that the decision to retract the papers was a human error and we can confirm that no software or ‘bot’ would have been involved in the process,” a Springer Nature spokesperson told Science.

University of Quebec historians Yves Gingras and Mahdi Khelfaoui found that Planck’s papers fell short of modern digitization and copyright-management standards, but that no scientific fraud had taken place. One paper appeared in other publications, a practice that was more common and accepted in the past, and the second paper, a response to a critic, used the same title his detractor used.

Gingras told Science he’s skeptical that no technological issue played a role in the mistaken retractions.

“Who can believe that in 2011 someone at Springer manually browsed decades of archived journals and happened to discover two short papers by Planck that allegedly presented a copyright issue?” he said.