If I reworked an idea published by a paper which has a fatal error, could I publish a paper on my work? While doing my M.Sc research in Engineering, I encountered a nice idea published by almost an unknown journal. However, while studying that paper I found a fatal assumption which is made at the beginning of the paper, yielding the whole work to a ruin.

So I restudied the idea from the beginning, and I developed a whole mathematical form yielding to the final correct equations. And that's took me for about three months.

So my questions are:


Is it appropriate to publish a paper in this work.
And if yes, then should I cite the "wrong" paper, telling that it has a wrong assumption which I am avoiding in my work for example.


Kindly advise.
Sure, if your results are watertight you should publish them. When you point out the shortcommings of the previous paper, you have to do it with extreme tact. Ask somebody knowledgeable in the area of work, probably your advisor or respected faculty, to go over that particular part of your text (at least) before sending it out for review, and be specially careful with any suggestions in that area.