Sloppy Scholarship

Academics often don't check their sources before using them. A team at the University of California, Los Angeles, found that scientists overwhelmingly copy references and citations from papers written by peers. The researchers estimate that only 20 percent of scientists go directly to the original source.

By Jason Williams, published on March 01, 2003

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Don't trust everything you read: When it comes to journal articles, researchers may not have done their own background work. A team at the University of California, Los Angeles, found that scientists overwhelmingly copy references and citations from papers written by peers. The researchers estimate that only 20 percent of scientists go directly to the original source.

The team examined citation data for a paper on the structure of two-dimensional crystals, referenced 4,300 times since 1973. Although there were more than 1 billion possible errors in citing the volume, page or year of publication, only 45 variations in error actually showed up. One error appeared 78 times, suggesting errors were copied from one scientist to the next.

The UCLA researchers pointed out that they had read each of the 12 works referenced in their own article, published in the journal Condensed Matter Physics.