New Scientist, 29 August, 1998

FEEDBACK

As a peer review journal, Nature is usually 
the first to report the research that appears in 
its pages. Just occasionally, however, the 
magazine gets scooped.

Thus a "news" item in the journal at the 
beginning of August reported that it rains 
more often on weekends than on weekdays. 
But this wasn't news to Feedback, who 
enjoys dipping into the humour magazine The 
Annals of Improbable Research.

In the March/April issue of that journal, 
David Schultz of the National Severe Storms 
Research Laboratory in Norman, Oklahoma, 
reported the same phenomenon. Will Nature 
reprimand its referees for failing to notice 
prior publication?