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Comment by jrimbault | Hacker News Reader

I notice how the title by Ars Technica is much less baity than Nature: "Why have papers by one of history’s most famous physicists been retracted?" vs "Why did this journal retract two 1940s papers by Max Planck?"

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For starters, Ars shouldn't write "this journal" when it's about another publication than themselves.

Using “this X” in the title is the definition of bait to me. They could, in as many characters, say the journals name. But they don’t specifically in order to bait you into clicking to find out which journal.

It’s almost like Nature doesn’t expect its readers to know who this Max Planck guy is. :-)

Exactly, it seems that HN can assume a certain level of scientific knowledge among its readers that Nature can't.

Well it would seem that the AAAS shouldn't assume that about HN readers.

The previous posted article was posted on science.org, managed by American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) not Nature, which is a British publication.

The organization that did the removal was Springer Nature, parent of the publisher of Nature. It was reported in several places, the one linked here was on a site affiliated by a completely different organization.

Also, science.org is open to everyone, their articles are written and titled for any level of knowledge and any background. Ars and HN are very specific in their target audience and write to that. Even then the comments will be filled with complaints if things aren't written in a manner approachable to anyone.

If Ars can, then HN definitely can.

Nah. It’s all part of the clickbait. You want to know which physicist, so you click

It's still clickbait and a good example of how infantile these publications are today. Ars and Nature really should be above all these bullshit headline games, but the fact they aren't explains a large part of their general degradation.

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