Article Link: What Is 'peer Review', And How Does It Work?

[Guest]

Would it be wise to expose a journal for their rejection to review a manuscript?

I'm not sure what could be unwise about it . . .

Can they just refuse for no stated reason at all?

To my knowledge no. The default brush-off would be a letter from the editor stating that the submitted manuscript was outside the subject area for the journal. That's the sort of thing I would need to see before accepting claims of editorial bias against bigfoot papers. Show me 5 or 6 such letters from different journals responding to the same manuscript (and show me an abstract of the manuscript!) and that'll at least give me the information necessary to form an opinion on editorial bias.

[Guest]

Every time we have a "peer-review" discussion there will be some who bash the process, claiming an editorial bias against publishing "bigfoot papers." This is simply not true. There have been several papers on the subject published in legitimate journals and we have, of course, the editor of arguably the most prestigious journal (Henry Gee from Nature) making repeated statements that he would welcome submissions on the topic. For years I've been calling for people who claim editorial bias to provide evidence in the form of reviews and rejection letters from journal editors. I've not seen a single one. The peer review process is NOT the reason we lack a formal scientific description of bigfoot, the lack of bigfoot is the reason for that.

This post is exactly why I linked to the article...

Going around saying "Science ignores the evidence" is not entirely true. There IS a scientific publishing method, and I wish more sasquatch researchers took it seriously enough to collect data that way, and SUBMIT IT for review. The lack of papers means either there is NOT evidence, or no one collecting it is submitting it.

This means the fault is mostly with those that call themselves 'researchers'. Investigator? Perhaps. Researchers? I do not think so.

[southernyahoo]

Smitty you know as well as I do that the people who manage to find the time to go look for the evidence (by in large part) are in no way funded or credentialed / or educated in the ways of academia.

There are no papers.

There are no "Real researchers".

There is no evidence for review.

So these are the observations, Which would you fix first?

What would you call evidence that would qualify for a peer reviewed paper?

[southernyahoo]

To my knowledge no. The default brush-off would be a letter from the editor stating that the submitted manuscript was outside the subject area for the journal. That's the sort of thing I would need to see before accepting claims of editorial bias against bigfoot papers. Show me 5 or 6 such letters from different journals responding to the same manuscript (and show me an abstract of the manuscript!) and that'll at least give me the information necessary to form an opinion on editorial bias

Suppose you were shown some, then what?

[Guest]

Suppose you were shown some, then what?

"that'll at least give me the information necessary to form an opinion on editorial bias"

Is this thing on?

[Guest]

Smitty you know as well as I do that the people who manage to find the time to go look for the evidence (by in large part) are in no way funded or credentialed / or educated in the ways of academia.

Krantz, Fahrenbach, Bindernagle, Meldrum . . . . plenty of experience in this cohort to have published voluminously on bigfoot if there was anything worthwhile to submit.

[Guest]

Krantz, Fahrenbach, Bindernagle, Meldrum . . . . plenty of experience in this cohort to have published voluminously on bigfoot if there was anything worthwhile to submit.

Southernyahoo: You would have to place me in a slightly less skeptical category than Sask...But his point IS valid. There are some credentialed scientists (see the quoted list above) who WOULD submit papers. However, they are very few. Most of the 'evidence hunters' that are out there looking fall into three categories:

1) Outright scammers who think they can sell snake oil to the gullible.

2) Deluded people who see evidence without understanding what they are seeing.

3) Honest researchers who are doing their best to catalog and confirm the evidence, and explain it.

This last category is the only hope. Some are knowledgeable about scientific process, some are not. I would urge ALL of them to be self critical, and educate themselves to the fullest extent possible. Even those who have had personal experiences cannot escape the reality...The science must get done, or no sasquatch.

Skeptics make for better research. Nobody thought rocks fell to Earth from space until someone PROVED IT in a scientific court of inquiry.

[southernyahoo]

"that'll at least give me the information necessary to form an opinion on editorial bias"

Is this thing on?

I don't know yet, I'd have to let that scientist bring it to light if and when it should happen.

[southernyahoo]

Southernyahoo: You would have to place me in a slightly less skeptical category than Sask...But his point IS valid. There are some credentialed scientists (see the quoted list above) who WOULD submit papers. However, they are very few. Most of the 'evidence hunters' that are out there looking fall into three categories:

1) Outright scammers who think they can sell snake oil to the gullible.

2) Deluded people who see evidence without understanding what they are seeing.

3) Honest researchers who are doing their best to catalog and confirm the evidence, and explain it.

This last category is the only hope. Some are knowledgeable about scientific process, some are not. I would urge ALL of them to be self critical, and educate themselves to the fullest extent possible. Even those who have had personal experiences cannot escape the reality...The science must get done, or no sasquatch.

Skeptics make for better research. Nobody thought rocks fell to Earth from space until someone PROVED IT in a scientific court of inquiry.

1) Yeah there are some of those, but not the majority IMO.

2) Depends on what evidence you are talking about and which particular piece of evidence, but yes misinterpretation can happen.

3)The only hope. Sad , but true I suppose.

Obviously there is a road block between the collection of the data/ evidence and having a unified effort in the processing of it. I'm disappointed that there are so few in various fileds of research where their expertise in analysis would move things along much quicker. It's really difficult to blame an "evidence hunter" when he comes across evidence and needs assistance in that., with so few to turn to.

Not sure I agree on skeptics, they might not look for evidence at all!

Edited April 27, 2011 by southernyahoo

[Guest]

I naively suggested that we set up some research standards on the Alabama Bigfoot Research Forums about a year ago when I first became interested in the bigfoot topic and got soundly lamblasted by everyone but Matt, aka Oklahomasquatch, who was very supportive of the idea.

I suggested that we gather techniques based on criminal investigation, OSHA standards, and techniques used by anthropologists and archeologists in the field instead of reinventing the wheel. There would also need to be some kind of guidelines based on chain of custody, how to handle photographic evidence, interviewing witnesses, etc. All of these guidelines could be adapted for bigfoot researchers and compiled into a manual to use for those serious about collecting evidence. If everyone follows the same protocols in evidence collection then that would be a start in making bigfoot research more legitimate, IMO, and then maybe some serious discussion on peer review of papers could actually take place with a more organized body of evidence to base assumptions about the creature's existance, much less it's characteristics.

[Guest Melodramatix]

I naively suggested that we set up some research standards on the Alabama Bigfoot Research Forums about a year ago when I first became interested in the bigfoot topic and got soundly lamblasted by everyone but Matt, aka Oklahomasquatch, who was very supportive of the idea.

I suggested that we gather techniques based on criminal investigation, OSHA standards, and techniques used by anthropologists and archeologists in the field instead of reinventing the wheel. There would also need to be some kind of guidelines based on chain of custody, how to handle photographic evidence, interviewing witnesses, etc. All of these guidelines could be adapted for bigfoot researchers and compiled into a manual to use for those serious about collecting evidence. If everyone follows the same protocols in evidence collection then that would be a start in making bigfoot research more legitimate, IMO, and then maybe some serious discussion on peer review of papers could actually take place with a more organized body of evidence to base assumptions about the creature's existance, much less it's characteristics.

Wow, people gave u cxxp for suggesting the obvious.

Of course there must be a standard when researching something.

All fields of science have standard methods and approaches.

[Guest Melodramatix]

ANYone who thinks that "peer review" in any case is all that valuable because the "scientific community" en bloc is super objective, unbiased, and rational would do well to review the sad tale of the campaign against the work of Bjorn Lomborg.

Do you mean that the peer review can be "stained" by subjectivity but not the research?

All researchers dedicate themselves to a certain approach.

What is needed is what someone suggested in this thread: a standard for the research.

Perhaps it would also be useful to make a chart of the major theories.

As a researcher (in a very different field though) I can see that research within the field of bigfoot is not

very strict or standardized. I think it would do a lot of good to this community.

Don't get me wrong, some research is done preoperly and even impeccable but there is also research which

is of very low quality.

Hmmmm...What would two major approaches be?

Could it be that some believe that bigfoot is a creature of flesh and bones while others seem to believe its "intergalactic" or inter-dimensional?

A starting point at least

[Guest]

A good first step using a newly developed standard for research would be to establish that there is valid evidence for an unknown specie's existence. From there, you could use the validated evidence and research standards to try to establish a theory for what the creature actually might be. After that, you might have enough information to write a paper for peer review that could possibly garner enough attention to warrant research dollars. I think that might be where Dr. Ketchum will run into trouble with her forthcoming paper, that being how her hair samples were obtained and how many folks handled the samples before they got to her. That is a lot of variables not accounted for that can mess up DNA analysis IMO when you don't have a type specimen for comparison.

[southernyahoo]

A good first step using a newly developed standard for research would be to establish that there is valid evidence for an unknown specie's existence.

yep

I think that might be where Dr. Ketchum will run into trouble with her forthcoming paper, that being how her hair samples were obtained and how many folks handled the samples before they got to her. That is a lot of variables not accounted for that can mess up DNA analysis IMO when you don't have a type specimen for comparison.

A back up to whether the collectors or anyone in the chain of custody had contaminated the samples is to have those people provide bucal swabs to eliminate them as contributors.

[Guest]

There is also probably some type of method for washing the hair I'm not aware of but then you have the age of the hair to consider and how it was stored before getting to the research facility as issues, I don't know, just seems like a lot of unknowns involved to me that might take away from the results and subsequent paper.