Random asterisk when using BibTeX and res.cls

Question

I am using res.cls and commented out \nofiles. However when I use BibTeX for my publication list, I get this random * above the references. How do I remove this *?

\documentclass{res} 
\renewcommand{\refname}{}
\begin{document}
\begin{resume}
\section{\centerline{ \underline{SELECTED PUBLICATIONS}}}
\nocite{*}
\bibliography{myPublications}
\bibliographystyle{aiaa} 
\end{resume} 
\end{document}

Answer 1

The problem comes from the line

\section*{\refname}

used inside the thebibliography environment as defined in article.cls (the base document class for res.cls). To prevent the asterisk, add the following lines to the preamble:

\makeatletter
\renewenvironment{thebibliography}[1]
     {\list{\@biblabel{\@arabic\c@enumiv}}%
           {\settowidth\labelwidth{\@biblabel{#1}}%
            \leftmargin\labelwidth
            \advance\leftmargin\labelsep
            \@openbib@code
            \usecounter{enumiv}%
            \let\p@enumiv\@empty
            \renewcommand\theenumiv{\@arabic\c@enumiv}}%
      \sloppy
      \clubpenalty4000
      \@clubpenalty \clubpenalty
      \widowpenalty4000%
      \sfcode`\.\@m}
     {\def\@noitemerr
       {\@latex@warning{Empty `thebibliography' environment}}%
      \endlist}
\makeatother

Answer 2

Discovered this answer purely accidentally. If you use this answer (by the same author as the accepted answer in this question!) to suppress the "References" title that \bibliographygenerates, then this problem is automatically (auto-magically perhaps!) fixed. So, the overall solution looks cleaner. In the spirit of Tex.SE, am reproducing part of the answer here:

Add these lines to the preamble:

\usepackage{etoolbox}
\patchcmd{\thebibliography}{\section*{\refname}}{}{}{}

Answer 3

Another method, that is a bit more hacky, is to basically cover the asterisk by placing a white colorbox behind the bibliography name then moving the bibliography up to cover the asterisk. For example,

\usepackage{xcolor}
\renewcommand\bibname{\vspace{-2em}\colorbox{white}{\large Citations}}