Irony? Guardian piece promising “there can be no turning back now” removed “because it was launched too early”

Three or four times per year, a Google Alert lands in my inbox revealing a story in The Guardian that has been removed because it broke an embargo. One of those arrived today, so I tweeted a link to the story.

While looking at that page, Emily Lakdawalla noticed that a number of the related stories — presumably generated automatically — were also “removed.” One in particular caught my attention.

The headline said:

New embargo record, from NEJM: 38 minutes!

I’ve written it before, but I have to write it again: Never underestimate the New England Journal of Medicine.

The holder of the Embargo Watch Short Embargo Record, with an impressive 49 minutes, has shaved another 11 minutes off its time. Today’s media list email, which went out at 4:22 ET:

New York Times breaks PNAS wine-climate change study embargo

The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) has lifted the embargo early on a paper on the effects of grape growing on biodiversity after a New York Times story went live hours before the scheduled embargo.

Here’s a note that went out to the journal’s media list earlier today: