Guest Posted April 22, 2011 Posted April 22, 2011 Sometimes I am disappointed by the level of discourse here regarding actual science, evidence, and peer review. This article is a pretty good primer: BoingBoing article on Peer Review I hope you'll give it a read.
Guest Posted April 22, 2011 Posted April 22, 2011 Sometimes I am disappointed by the level of discourse here regarding actual science, evidence, and peer review. This article is a pretty good primer: BoingBoing article on Peer Review I hope you'll give it a read. Awesome link. Thank's!
Guest Posted April 22, 2011 Posted April 22, 2011 Thank you for posting this link. I grew up with a dad in academia, so I'm familiar with peer review, but it was nice to have a refresher course.
Guest Posted April 22, 2011 Posted April 22, 2011 I think the article politely by-passes the issue of bias in the peers doing the reviewing. The author even reveals a particular bias of his own when he mentions "climate change deniers" in particular. This undercuts his "if they have anything solid, they'll eventually get accepted" claim. There are more than a few topics in science like that one where there is most definitely an "orthodoxy" (usually termed "mainstream" or similar) which is the default position of Science en mass, and any challenge to that orthodoxy, as the author admits, will be initially and doggedly rejected often as not. That is not "science". True science goes where the facts lead, whether the scientists like that destination or not.
Guest TooRisky Posted April 22, 2011 Posted April 22, 2011 Peer review has no bearing in a forum of this type... In order to review your peers one has to actually know them and a certain criteria has to be present in order to gauge the peer against... What makes this forum unique is that we get every type of person you can imagine here and we discuss in one form or another a hobby of sorts... Also without even meeting a person and at the very leeast observing them how can one effectively safe they can review the person, this behavior has led to disasters in the past and is the very reason for face to face meeting's... So of course IMHO peer review cant work here and actually should be avoided at all cost for being bias and judgmental without facts... Heck it is just another white collar phrase for ""what can we do to justify our pay because we really don't do any real work"" anyways... 1
Guest Posted April 22, 2011 Posted April 22, 2011 Heck it is just another white collar phrase for ""what can we do to justify our pay because we really don't do any real work"" anyways... So if I made a similar statement about "blue collar" workers not really doing any work no one would be offended?
Guest Posted April 22, 2011 Posted April 22, 2011 Heck it is just another white collar phrase for ""what can we do to justify our pay because we really don't do any real work"" anyways... Depends on how you define work,if you define work as any type of job using your brawn that you get compensated for you might have a point. However, without mental work done by those who don't do physical labor you wouldn't have that computer you are using to type your smartass response on
Guest Posted April 22, 2011 Posted April 22, 2011 Too Risky: I have no idea what your post has to do with a link to an article that may give an understanding of scientific peer review. MANY people on this forum are not well informed of the process, or it's relevance to the eventual recognition of the existence of sasquatch. I certainly don't think anything posted HERE will be peer reviewed, but we refer all the time here to papers that undergo that rigorous process. I can't decide if you fail to understand why I posted the link, or fail to see that it WILL be relevant to proving or disproving a species. Either way...I think you are failing to understand something. Almost NOTHING we see here reaches the level of scientific proof, and I cannot help but think if researchers understood and respected that process more, we'd get less blob and more 'squatch. ~Smitty
Guest Melodramatix Posted April 22, 2011 Posted April 22, 2011 "Reviewers are not the people who decide which papers will be published and which will not. Instead, reviewers look for flaws—like big errors in reasoning or methodology, and signs of plagiarism" I'm one of those people getting paid for "doing nothing" and now I'm going to prove that statement wrong by doing something without a pay (refering to the white collar discussion ) There is so much more to peer reviews. One thing making peer review in the field of cryptozoology very difficult is the fact that there is nothing to lean on. Which in turn is why science more or less requires a body. I'd say that plausibility is a key word when performing peer review in this field. The main reason for describing how you conducted your research (methodology) is that if another researcher do exactly what you did, the result is to be the same. I see that as a difficulty in the field of cryptozoology. Well, just my thoughts. I might be totally wrong cause I work in a field very different from biology and such.
Guest Thepattywagon Posted April 23, 2011 Posted April 23, 2011 (edited) As far as I'm concerned, the only one qualified to do 'peer review' is this guy.. Oops, sorry, wrong Pier! Edited April 23, 2011 by Thepattywagon
Guest Thepattywagon Posted April 23, 2011 Posted April 23, 2011 "Peer review really just means that other scientists have been involved in helping the editors of these journals decide which papers to publish, and what changes need to be made to those papers before publication."
Guest Posted April 23, 2011 Posted April 23, 2011 One thing making peer review in the field of cryptozoology very difficult is the fact that there is nothing to lean on. That is not true. There is the body of accumulated knowledge of wildlife in general, and primates in this case in particular. This is the knowledge base from which a backdrop can be established to examine bf evidence in a scientific way without a full corpse on the slab. Which in turn is why science more or less requires a body. No, it requires a body because of it's rigid "my way or the highway" approach to data collection and analysis, combined with the self-assigned role of Arbiters of Truth that the Scientific Community has taken upon itself. I'd say that plausibility is a key word when performing peer review in this field. The main reason for describing how you conducted your research (methodology) is that if another researcher doexactly what you did, the result is to be the same. I see that as a difficulty in the field of cryptozoology. This has been done several times (Fahrenbach's track trait statisitical analysis, Dr Meldrum's foot morphology paper, etc), and every time the Scientific Community has turned it's nose up at the results, which were readily duplicatable by any researcher with the appropriate expertise.
Guest Melodramatix Posted April 23, 2011 Posted April 23, 2011 That is not true. There is the body of accumulated knowledge of wildlife in general, and primates in this case in particular. This is the knowledge base from which a backdrop can be established to examine bf evidence in a scientific way without a full corpse on the slab. No, it requires a body because of it's rigid "my way or the highway" approach to data collection and analysis, combined with the self-assigned role of Arbiters of Truth that the Scientific Community has taken upon itself. This has been done several times (Fahrenbach's track trait statisitical analysis, Dr Meldrum's foot morphology paper, etc), and every time the Scientific Community has turned it's nose up at the results, which were readily duplicatable by any researcher with the appropriate expertise. 1. Can't compare apples with oranges. 2. Science is not about "my way or the highway". It is about discovering and documenting "the new". There is no such thing as truth in science. Every researcher is biased and every setting has it's circumstances and so on. 3. How would you go on to duplicate for example a DNA analysis without finding another specimen to take DNA from? The plausibility is really low here.
Guest Posted April 24, 2011 Posted April 24, 2011 1. Can't compare apples with oranges. In the broadest sense you can, since they are both fruit and share the characteristics of fruit. However, the better analogy in this case would be Golden Sweet apples to Welling ton apples (or other variety of choice). Primates are primates, and the knowledge of primates can be used as a backdrop to compare bf evidence against to see if it makes sense for a primate or doesn't make sense for a primate. It's not absolute proof, but the stronger match we can show between reported br behavior and evidence and the evidence and behavior of other primates, the more stronger the case for it's actual reality becomes. 2. Science is not about "my way or the highway". It is about discovering and documenting "the new". There is no such thing as truth in science. Every researcher is biased and every setting has it's circumstances and so on. GOOD scientists are very much about what is true and what is not true. If the evidence shows that [x] is true, a good scientist will say so even if he does not like [x]. Not so with BF, as has been documented multiple times. Dr Meldrum shows several examples of scientists whom he has personally walked through the evidence who have indeed changed their opinions favorably based thereon. He has also documented so-called scientists who have been walked through the same, even having admitted the evidence was impressive, refused to modify their opinion based on their belief that "it just cannot be". 3. How would you go on to duplicate for example a DNA analysis without finding another specimen to take DNA from? The plausibility is really low here. You can examine the lab proceedures for error. You can take the results and run your own comparison. In the case of the track trait distribution data you can take the dataset and run the calculations yourself. In the case of the morphology paper, you can look at the anatomical landmarks in the casts and photos yourself and identify them. You can take the same data and repeat the experimential analysis. That is supposed to be the "gold standard" for valid science...except for the case of BF it seems, when it is not enough.
Guest TooRisky Posted April 24, 2011 Posted April 24, 2011 Explain to me how you would all do a scientific peer review when none are scientists, most never go out to "Independently" find any evidence and those of you who are skeptics have really no idea of what you are even doing here... So on a peer level (You and me) is what I was talking about and what I wrote still applies, you either are not qualified and/or under educated in all aspects of making any judgement of your peers scientific or otherwise, thus the point of any thing peer review is mute... This is not a personal attack some seem to read into everything, this is an observation with cold hard truth blended in with it...
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