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©Marko Grönroos, 1998

USENET News talk.origins

Säie: Jonathan Wells...the new Behe?

Charles Wagner <cewagner AT spec PISTE net> writes: > Apparently, you haven't read my opinions about peer review. It sucks. Can you suggest a better alternative for pruning scientific publications? Who would choose what to publish? You? The editors don't have time to read everything, nor are they qualified in the field of all papers. Or should they publish everything? For example Nature publishes only something like 2% of received papers. Even that makes one nice thick magazine every week. Who would like to buy a magazine that is half-full of total crap? > It's nothing more than a form of censorship to keep unpleasant > observations out of the journals. No journal would publish an > article by Jonathan Wells or me, for that matter. Are you a scientist with an academic training? Are you qualified to do research or do you just think you are? Do you write clearly and logically or do you just think you do? Are you affiliated with a university or other reputable science institute? That's of course not a prerequisite (I've written published papers and I'm not even MSc), but it would mean that you have at least some sort of training to do scientific work. I'm quite confident that with 99.99% probability the reviewers have never heard about you nor Wells, unless you're trying to publish about evolution. In that case, the chance might even be as low as 99%, with Wells. Papers are generally evaluated according to their contents, not so much according to their author, although well-known authors probably get their papers through more easily. Some high-visibility magazines (such as Nature or Science) probably consider the backgrounds of the authors more carefully, just to try to make sure that the article is not a fraud or anything like that. -- -- Marko Grönroos, magi AT iki PISTE fi (http://www.iki.fi/magi/) -- Paradoxes are the source of truth and the end of wisdom

Charles Wagner <cewagner AT spec PISTE net> writes: > Yes, and let the scientific community decide on the validity of your > claim. Let's say that a few years back, someone claimed that dinosaurs > had feathers and had pictures to prove it. Could you please give us a demonstration of your skills in scientific writing? The problem with some articles may not be just the claim and the observations, but also how they are presented. If someone writes an article "Dinosaurs Had Feathers", simply shows some pictures, and then concludes: "dinos had feathers", do you think that would be good style of writing? Pictures do not tell everything. They would have to be accompanied by good description about their context, lots of other data, and good reasons WHY the picture really is about a dino. So, even if the idea is ok, and the observations are relevant, a paper may fail in giving the theoretical grounds for the observations and conclusions. Show us a paper that was rejected, with its rejection letter, and we might give comments. Also remember that there doesn't really have to be anything wrong in the article - it might just not be relevant to the magazine, or not as interesting as other submitted articles. Reviewers often give relative points, you see. One conference had following requirements for the reviewer:             1. REVIEWER'S STATEMENT:             I have read this paper. I acknowledge that any new intellectual             content of this paper is confidential and will not disclose or use             it until such time as it is published by the submitting author(s)             otherwise becomes publicly known. This review is my own opinion;             I have written it; and I have not discussed my review of this             paper with any other peer reviewer for this conference.             I am not at the same institution as any of the authors.             I am not reviewing more than one paper for this conference by this             author.             I do not have an especially close relationship (or an antagonistic             relationship) with the author(s).             I am not re-reviewing this work (i.e., I have not, within the past             year, reviewed substantially the same work by the same author). I             feel that I am qualified to review this paper. I've received following kinds of negative comments from reviewers:             3. SIGNIFICANCE OF THE PROBLEM:             ... are a fundamental technology within ..., but the questions of             how they can be evolved has been well-worked, and this paper does             not extend prior knowledge significantly.             9. SUGGESTIONS TO AUTHOR FOR IMPROVING             Applying a variety of encoding methods to a common problem set, by             a third party, is of some value. But there is little insight             provided beyond the basic empirial results. So what?! ....etc... These are of course vague, and I might not agree with them completely, but I can't say that my self-judgement is necessarily better. Even if they were wrong, I could still greatly improve the paper. Thinking about that study now, over a year later, I know it was full of crap and not even worth publishing. ;-) -- -- Marko Grönroos, magi AT iki PISTE fi (http://www.iki.fi/magi/) -- Paradoxes are the source of truth and the end of wisdom

Edellinen säie: Unintelligent Design of Intelligent Design
Seuraava säie: Alabama anti-miscegenation vote
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