[dawnofdusk]

As any practicing scientist knows even good research papers may be littered with blatant but unimportant errors. There is unfortunately no good reason or system to "correct the record", and it is not clear to me if such a thing is a good use of human resources. Nonetheless, I think correcting the record is always appreciated!

[jessfyi]

Getting a compound incorrect is not an "unimportant" error (for example the difference between sodium nitrate & sodium nitrite is small but critical) and seeing "small but blatant" errors actively propagated is the entire reason why the record should be corrected. The only upside of these little artifacts like "vegetative electron microscopy" [0] is that it's a leading indicator that the entire paper and team deserve more scrutiny--as well as any of those whom cite it.

[0] https://www.sciencealert.com/a-strange-phrase-keeps-turning-...

[avar]

I believe they meant that it's "unimportant" because (to use your example) sodium nitrate and sodium nitrite actually exist, whereas there's no element with the chemical symbol "Gr".

[dawnofdusk]

The error in the OP is a typo that could never seriously confuse anyone, as the element Gr does not exist.

An interesting perspective is Terry Tao's on local vs. global errors (https://terrytao.wordpress.com/advice-on-writing-papers/on-l...). A typo like this, even if propagated, is a local error which at worst makes it very annoying to Ctrl-F papers or do literature review. Local errors deserve to be corrected, but in practice their importance to science as a field is small.

[the__alchemist]

That is a possible, but charitable explanation. I would like to hold your opinion, but don't know if I can. It must complete with less-charitable ones.

[zh3]

Like the legal principle of "De minimis" ('the law does not concern itself with trifles').

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_minimis

[thewanderer1983]

Have you heard of this thing called Peer Review? It's what academia hold up as their gold standard and it is supposed to pick up on these things.

[crazygringo]

Peer review isn't spellcheck or proofreading.

It's about logic, methodology, significance, and citations.

It's not some gold standard of perfection or truth.

[thewanderer1983]

>Peer review isn't spellcheck or proofreading.

>It's about logic, methodology, significance, and citations

To quote kazinator in this thread. "The typo is not the problem; it's that the typo is evidence of academic dishonesty.

When you make a citation, it means you cracked open the original work, understood what it says and located a relevant passage to reference in your work.

The authors are propagating the same typo because they are not copying the original correct text; they are just copying ready-made citations of that text which they plant into their papers to manufacture the impression that they are surveying other work in their area and taking it into account when doing their work."

>It's not some gold standard of perfection or truth.

"Gold standard" is a term used within the scientific community to describe the high rigor expected within the scientific community when doing research. One of the processes they hold up in this standard is Peer Review. I wasn't making some general public statement about perfection. Google "Gold Peer Review Gold Standard".

[jibal]

That's not only quite factually wrong, but has nothing to do with the point, which is about mindless copying.

[dawnofdusk]

If it is factually wrong please tell me how.

[IAmBroom]

Pithy replies are seldom backed up by much.