Retraction Watch carries a report of a Japanese paper being retracted for having been published as many as three times.
For some reason the story immediately brought back memories of the time when I was working in Japan and and all official forms had to be submitted in “triplicate”. I remember my visits to the Japanese Labour Office to apply for extensions of my work permit and the insistence of the clerk that “triplicate” meant three identical things which therefore required that I fill in the same form in ink 3 times. My work saving solution of filling it in once, photocopying it and signing all three copies was not considered to be in compliance.
This got me wondering a little about where and when the requirements for documents “in triplicate” had originated and why it was so popular with government departments all over the world. This particular form from the US Treasury Department is just an example but I like their final claim that their triplicate requirement “is in accordance with the Paperwork Reduction Act of 1995”.
The k2p blog 