Two papers, published early in the last century, appeared in the [Cahiers des Sciences Sociales]. They formed the foundation of some very important work and are still cited in papers published today. In fact, I needed to cite them today but I didn't have copies and our library doesn't keep the [Cahiers] on the shelves.
For some reason these papers don't appear in the ISI citation indices nor in any other electronic database I usually use, so I started checking other people's references for the bibliographic information. Not a single one of the books and articles I checked had referenced these papers correctly. One "definitive" source had cut-and-pasted the latter half of the first title into the second title. I counted up to five different spelling errors in the first title alone across different sources. The year, the year, of the first paper was wrong in every single source. Some of the errors had obviously proliferated from author to author by mindlessly copying from each other's bibliographies.
I don't know why I didn't do it first, but after wasting about an hour in the paper world, I found (in about five minutes) the archives of the [Cahiers] at (go figure) www.cahiersdessciencessociales.fr. I now have my very own copies of the papers and I believe I have the only accurate citations to them in the English-speaking world.
I suspect that not a single one of the authors whose references I searched today has actually seen, much less read, these papers. I'm not going to claim the high horse and say that I have never cited an old classic that I have not read myself, a sloppy and unscholarly practice. Nonetheless, is it too much to ask that if you cite a paper you at least look at it? Or the spine of the journal volume to determine what year it appeared, fer chrissakes?
15 comments:
I also feel very strongly about this. I recently spent a month tracking down a mis-cited government document that is common in my field. It was only available from one place, not electronically, and had not been previously requested. Assuming some of the citers may have been sent the original report, that still leaves dozens of lazy authors and co-authors. I was taught very forcefully as an undergrad that I should at least read the abstract of every single thing I cite, preferably the whole paper since authors can be wrong. I can't believe this isn't universal!
Who cares about a buncha old fucking french shit, anyway?
1. I have been guilty of this, very occasionally, and only when writing papers for a class, not for milestones or pubs.
2. Notwithstanding, I almost always get an e-copy, or get a hard copy and fucking scan it, as long as it's not a whole book.
3. When I review a paper, which is rare as I am still a grad student, but I do occasionally get a shot at it, I look at every single one of the references I can get and check to see whether the reference says what the paper authors claim it says. This is because I am a huge bastard.
I just went looking for a 1972 paper that was reportedly published in Nature (as per the first author citing himself multiple times in later papers). Turns out he had just "forgotten" to include the full name of the journal, as it was really "Nature of X and X". Gotta love it. I wonder how many promotions that little "mistake" helped in?
There's a study which has tracked mis-citation which is quite interesting: www.complex-systems.com/pdf/14-3-5.pdf (I've not actually read it obviously ;))
How far off was the year? Is it possible that the erroneous year is actually the year the paper was written, submitted, or accepted as opposed to the date it was published? I've such discrepancies before.
As for errors in the title, the first thing that comes to mind is that the papers might have been published in multiple places under different titles. However, if the citations all name the same journal, that's probably not the case.
This is getting a little off-topic, but I've seen situations where one paper cites a second paper, which had been pending review or similar when the first was published, and now, years later, when I am reading the first paper, the second paper still has been not published.
Funny, I was about to suggest you should write a paper about your finding. And there comes that other Anonymous and references one.
@Micia - I'm not inclined to be generous. The volume and pages numbers were all correct. The year and the titles were wrong.
I was thinking about your actions concerning research practices.
First you are to be commended for being honest.
Second if the climate researches who messed up or falsified their data (take your pick) had been as honest and complete as you have been, we would have trustworthy data about the climate.
If they were honest researchers we would have good data to evaluate the planet's climate. Their dishonesty or laziness (take your pick) has done all us a great disservice. As it stand now we have no good data.
Maybe we need to get A.P. to take names and kick some climate guys butts to keep them honest.
I was tracking down a pretty well-known quote for my dissertation, and found that almost all references to it traced back to a pretty well-known scholar of the early 20th century... who had apparently made it up. When I went to track down the text he said he was quoting, it doesn't exist. I was shocked. I went around to every colleague I could think of to track down the text, every database, rummaged through old libraries, wrote to librarians... it simply does not exist.
What you describe is quite common in my field as well. What you document is that many people have likely not even seen, let alone read, the "classic" paper cited as the basis for their work. What they know about it is what they have read elsewhere, in textbooks or other papers.
There is even a good example here in the comments: What "faded" said has been proved to be false by those who looked at the entire record of the data behind the publications in question, data that result from many independent studies.
Charitably, some tralaticious bibliographical errors may have another cause: I never cite anything I haven't read; but once or twice, when I come to write up my research, I've found that I hadn't noted all the bibliographical details I needed when consulting the book or article (which would be in some distant library), and then copied those from someone else's bibliography.
I've sometimes had copy-editors find errors in my references, and it is almost always (1) typos (transposed digits for page or year), (2) due to the same reason nigel holmes gives: incomplete note-taking followed by googling for the full reference, or (3) when the only copy of the paper I can get hold of for free/cheap is a pre-publication version from the author's website or similar, which doesn't have the page numbers or year of publication (in which case I always confirm with the author that the content has not changed, esp if quoting directly).
Not that these three sources of errors are acceptable, but they are not as bad as citing things you haven't read, or falsifying the existence of papers entirely!
Thinking skills: who needs them? Aren't they anachronastic anyway?
So kick back and relax: no one needs references. Just tune into FOX-News and enjoy.
sigh.
Just wait til your paper reviewers fault YOU for having the wrong citation information! :) In (very small and not very strong but none-the-less true) defense of not reading all the sources.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uSdHoNJu5fU&playnext=1&videos=2tcijkCeekg
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