A journal retroactively retracted two 1940s Max Planck papers, not for fraud, but for duplicate publication
German physicist Max Planck, the founder of quantum theory, 1918 Nobel laureate and one of the most unimpeachable figures in the history of science, has joined an unusual list: Nobel Prize winners with retracted papers. The list is usually populated by cases of data fabrication or ethical violations. Planck’s case is different. His papers were retracted not because they were wrong, but because a publisher’s algorithm flagged them for “copyright violation,” a category that did not exist in the form it does today when the papers were written.
Two historians of science, Yves Gingras of the University of Quebec in Montreal and Mahdi Khelfaoui of the University of Quebec at Trois-Rivières, discovered the retractions while browsing Retraction Watch’s list of Nobel laureates whose papers have been retracted. Shocked to find Planck’s name, they traced the cause and published their findings in an arXiv preprint (DOI: 10.48550/arXiv.2605.17534).
What happened
The papers in question were published in Die Naturwissenschaften (now The Science of Nature, published by Springer Nature) in 1940 and 1942. Both are philosophical essays, not experimental results, reflecting on the nature of scientific knowledge. The 1942 paper, “Meaning and Limits of Exact Science,” was based on a lecture Planck delivered in Berlin the prior year and was also published as a booklet, in another journal, and in an anthology of Planck’s essays. The 1940 paper, “Natural Science and the Real External World,” was a response to a paper with the same title by Aloys Müller, a different scientist entirely.
Neither paper was retracted during Planck’s lifetime (he died in 1947). Both were cited normally into the 21st century. The retractions were applied decades later, during the large-scale digitization of journal archives around the mid-2000s, when Springer created DOI records for the papers and, according to Gingras and Khelfaoui, some algorithm or legal review flagged them.
The journal’s current editor-in-chief, Suzanne Scarlata of Worcester Polytechnic Institute, told Science magazine she had not known the papers had been retracted until contacted by a reporter. “That’s crazy,” she said. “I don’t understand why they were flagged. I think it just happened with their algorithm. It’s a mistake they should probably rectify.”
The arXiv preprint notes the irony: the papers remain freely accessible through the Internet Archive, but on Springer’s own platform, clicking the links reveals blank pages and empty PDFs.
The broader pattern
What makes this case significant, beyond the stature of the scientist involved, is what it reveals about the fragility of historical scientific records in the age of commercial digital archives. When large publishers own the digital infrastructure of science, decisions made by automated systems or by legal departments can effectively erase history.
Gingras and Khelfaoui argue that the retraction reflects “ignorance of past publication practices.” In the early 20th century, republication of the same material across journals, languages and formats was a legitimate and common practice, a way to maximize the circulation of knowledge. Lectures routinely appeared as journal articles, booklets and collected essays simultaneously, applying modern categories like “duplicate publication” and “self-plagiarism,” concepts that only crystallized in the 1990s alongside academic productivity metrics, to work from the 1940s fundamentally misunderstands the era’s scholarly norms, the authors argue.
Notably, this is not the first time such questions have arisen recently. On June 16, 1ban.news covered the case of Étienne Klein, the French physicist whose 1999 PhD was revoked by Université Paris Cité for plagiarism found across more than 60 percent of its pages. Both cases, Planck and Klein, raise the question of whether contemporary standards of scientific integrity should be applied retroactively to work produced in eras with fundamentally different norms, infrastructures and enforcement mechanisms. The Klein case asked this about plagiarism in a pre-digital thesis; the Planck case asks it about duplicate publication in a pre-commercial-publishing era.
Read more: Étienne Klein Lost His PhD Over Plagiarism — But What Does That Say About the 1990s Academy?
The authors recommend that historians demand restoration of full access to Planck’s papers on the journal’s platform, and that publishers recognize duplicate publication as a historically legitimate practice rather than a retroactive offense.
Sources:
1. Ouellette, J. “Why did this journal retract two 1940s papers by Max Planck?” Ars Technica, June 28, 2026. https://arstechnica.com/science/2026/06/why-did-this-journal-retract-two-1940s-papers-by-max-planck/
2. Gingras, Y. & Khelfaoui, M. “The curious case of Max Planck’s ‘retracted’ papers.” arXiv:2605.17534 (2026). DOI: 10.48550/arXiv.2605.17534
3. Kean, S. “How Max Planck’s papers ended up retracted.” Science, June 2026.
4. “Étienne Klein Lost His PhD Over Plagiarism — But What Does That Say About the 1990s Academy?” 1ban.news, June 16, 2026. https://1ban.news/etienne-klein-plagiarism-phd-1990s-era/