Submission + - Origin of Life paper, published in 1955, retracted
Fantastic Lad writes: In 1955, Homer Jacobson, a chemistry professor at Brooklyn College, published a paper called "Information, Reproduction and the Origin of Life" in American Scientist, the journal of Sigma Xi, the scientific honor society. Since then, his work has been used by Creationism theorists to argue against evolution, citing that Dr. Jacobson's work proved it was impossible for basic organic compounds to form naturally on their own. Dr. Jacobson, at age 84, upon doing a google search, discovered that his work was being cited by creationist websites, and saw that their citation was based on an error he had made, wrote to American Scientist to retract the 52 year-old paper. "It is not unusual for scientists to publish papers and, if they discover evidence that challenges them, to announce they were wrong. The idea that all scientific knowledge is provisional, able to be challenged and overturned, is one thing that separates matters of science from matters of faith."
