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Published online 29 October 2004 | Nature | doi:10.1038/news041025-22

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Out in the open

The debate over whether to publish scientific results that could compromise national security is nothing new, says Philip Ball.

When a scientific paper gets published five years after it was submitted, something fishy is going on. But for three classic papers1,2,3 that appeared in Physical Review in April 1946 after being submitted in early 1941, the story is made plain in a footnote.

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