Dodgy proof reading – or jumping to conclusions (from dubious finding[s] and results)
I’ve always felt a little bad about an article of mine published in the journal School Science Review at the time they were changing over their production processes. Although I had seen and checked the proofs of the article, I was dismayed to find the published version contained no end of small errors. How could I have missed them?
In checking my copy of the marked proof, I found that most of the errors did not exist in the original proof at all, but had somehow been introduced after I had made my corrections. Instead of the published version including my corrections, it included a number of new errors not in the proof!
This came to mind today when I was reading a paper in a journal called Information Technology & Computer Science. Looking at the results section of the study I found:
“3. Finding and Results
Naseriazar & Özmen, 2012: 287
Line drawings should be good quality scans or true electronic output. Low-quality scans are not acceptable. Figures must be embedded into the text and not supplied separately. There is no statistical significant difference between groups in terms success in the pre-test (t = 0.93, p = 0.654). …”
My initial reaction was confusion.
Then, I realised that it seemed that part of the instructions for authors had found its way into the text of the paper.
Then, I wondered how the authors could have been so careless in checking the proofs.
Then, I remembered my own experience, and decided it would be wrong to jump to premature conclusions.
Source cited:
- Naseriazar, A., & Özmen, H. (2012). Effectiveness of simulations on university students’ understanding of chemical equilibrium. Information Technology & Computer Science, 2, 285-290.
