“Springer Nature has removed two studies by Max Planck.”

Jim Moody points to this news article, “Why have papers by one of history’s most famous physicists been retracted? Springer Nature has removed two studies by Max Planck. A bot may be to blame.”

If you’re gonna retract something from Max Planck, I’d suggest starting here, with the notorious Manifesto of the Ninety-Three German Intellectuals defending Kaiser Wilhelm’s invasion of Belgium. Here are a couple of retractable passages:

It is not true that the life and property of a single Belgian citizen was injured by our soldiers without the bitterest self-defense having made it necessary.

It is not true that our troops treated Louvain brutally. Furious inhabitants having treacherously fallen upon them in their quarters, our troops with aching hearts were obliged to fire a part of the town as a punishment.

I guess they were the world’s most moral army. “Aching hearts” . . . that must have absolutely sucked. Really mean of those Belgians for defending themselves.

Just to be clear, I’m not saying that Planck should be “canceled.”

Who among us hadn’t retroactively disgraced ourselves with a lachrymose defense of military aggression?

I’m just saying, if you have to retract a paper by Max Planck, I’d retract that one.

P.S. The funny thing is that the above-linked article describes the famous physicist as “almost as widely revered for his character as his physics. In 1933, for example, he bravely confronted Adolf Hitler over Nazi Germany’s discriminatory laws against Jews.” I’ve never read anything about Planck’s life so I don’t know what changed with him between 1914 and 1933. Maybe the loss of the war in 1918 soured him on armed adventures.