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

[southernyahoo]

The default brush-off would be a letter from the editor stating that the submitted manuscript was outside the subject area for the journal.

With the circular perception that bigfoot is a myth and therefore doesn't exist, which journals would you name that could not make the claim in bold?

[Guest RayG]

With the circular perception that bigfoot is a myth and therefore doesn't exist, which journals would you name that could not make the claim in bold?

But which journals HAVE rejected bigfoot submissions? Where is this evidence of rejection that we keep hearing about but never see?

More elusive than bigfoot it seems.

RayG

Edited April 30, 2011 by RayG

[Guest]

A short list of "things Science knew that turned out to be wrong, thanks to "maverick" scientists

http://amasci.com/weird/vindac.html

Dr Meldrum, et al are in good company.

And people wonder why thinking people put little stock in "peer review"...

[Guest]

We've found PLENTY...hair, tracks, eyewitness reports, photos, etc. And Science, instead of pursuing the evidence openly and honestly and going where it leads has taken a hostile, dismissive stance (as Dr Meldrum has documented).

My point is that if you do not use standard methods to collect and validate that evidence to decrease the risk of hoax, contamination, or mis-identification you really don't have credible evidence from a scientific stand point. Tracks can be hoaxed; photos can be hoaxed and mis-identified; hair can be contaminated, mis-identified, or just too old to do anything with it; and eye witness reports are less than useful if you don't use a standard interviewing process......so that was my point. It may be enough for you and me to be convinced, but not enough for the scientific community to want to fund research in the area. And I don't disagree with that process at all, I wouldn't want federal tax dollars used to fund a research project on a reported medicinal plant that could cure cancer just because a shaman told our government it worked for him. There really isn't any difference between the two scenarios.

[Guest]

A short list of "things Science knew that turned out to be wrong, thanks to "maverick" scientists

http://amasci.com/weird/vindac.html

Dr Meldrum, et al are in good company.

And people wonder why thinking people put little stock in "peer review"...

There are lots of things we have wrong, sometimes we haven't advanced enough to have the right equipment to "see" something, i.e. the microscope. Science doesn't pretend to be conclusive in anything although some skeptics would argue with me on that point too.

[Guest RayG]

A short list of "things Science knew that turned out to be wrong, thanks to "maverick" scientists...

Yes, and once upon a time we knew the earth was flat, and that the sun circled the earth. A maverick idea that some maverick scientist presents eventually getting accepted as scientific is no great revelation. But how many of these maverick ideas got accepted solely because the maverick scientist said so? And don't forget to point out the flip side to that -- that many maverick ideas fail to get accepted. Perpetual motion, N-rays, cold fusion, and alchemy immediately come to mind.

There are entire books that detail "scientific ideas which were once popular but have since been disproved or superseded". I have one in front of me at this very moment, entitled Discarded Science: Ideas That Seemed Good At The Time..., 2006, by John Grant. The quote is from the back cover. It contains far-ranging topics from a wide variety of scientific fields.

As professor of physics Alan Cromer says in Uncommon Sense: The Heretical Nature of Science, pages 156-157, "If the evidence is convincing enough, the skeptics will in time accept almost anything, even that the continents are drifting about the face of the earth. But until the evidence is there, the only sane course is to reject all claims that are unverified and inconsistent with current knowledge."

Robert Park, emeritus professor of physics, was even more specific when, in June 1999, on his What's New website, he wrote:

"Those attending last weeks Annual Meeting of the Society for Scientific Exploration in Albuquerque (WN 4 Jun 99), take pride in "thinking outside the box." Talks on such uh, diverse topics as divine intervention, cold fusion, biological transmutation, precognitive dreams, psychosurgery, after-death communication, alien breeding experiments, clairvoyance, electronic signaling from the dead and prayer healing, were all accepted as serious science. There is no internal criticism in a community that believes it is under siege. Convinced that powerful vested interests, including the scientific establishment, are conspiring to hold back a scientific revolution, speakers complained that "new" science is denied funding, rejected by journal editors and even subjected to ridicule, just because it doesn't fit some outdated paradigm. Alas, to wear the mantle of Galileo it is not enough that you be persecuted by an unkind establishment, you must also be right."

I've bolded the crux of the issue.

RayG

[Guest]

My point is that if you do not use standard methods to collect and validate that evidence to decrease the risk of hoax, contamination, or mis-identification you really don't have credible evidence from a scientific stand point. Tracks can be hoaxed; photos can be hoaxed and mis-identified; hair can be contaminated, mis-identified, or just too old to do anything with it; and eye witness reports are less than useful if you don't use a standard interviewing process......so that was my point. It may be enough for you and me to be convinced, but not enough for the scientific community to want to fund research in the area. And I don't disagree with that process at all, I wouldn't want federal tax dollars used to fund a research project on a reported medicinal plant that could cure cancer just because a shaman told our government it worked for him. There really isn't any difference between the two scenarios.

With all due respect, Jodie, that's just absurd.

We have FAR more evidence for BF than that shaman has for his plant's effectiveness. We have well over a century of eyewitness testimonies (much longer than that if you include the aboriginal accounts), decades of documented track finds (including photos AND casts), forensically typed hairs, blood/dna work, film/video/still photos, audio recordings, and so forth.

You can sit around and nitpick details of chain-of-custody, and theorize about "contamination", but unless you're prepared to PROVE that the evidence is "tainted", all that is is more words that don't change the material facts to hand, i.e. the evidence.

[Guest]

Alas, to wear the mantle of Galileo it is not enough that you be persecuted by an unkind establishment, you must also be right."

I've bolded the crux of the issue.

RayG

And to be proven right is nigh on impossible when faced with implacable hostility to even objectively analyzing the evidence to hand for a phenomenon at issue.

[Guest RayG]

And to be proven right is nigh on impossible when faced with implacable hostility to even objectively analyzing the evidence to hand for a phenomenon at issue.

So Mulder, you have some evidence of rejection notifications for those bigfoot submissions to scientific journals? I'm skeptical.

RayG

[Guest]

With all due respect, Jodie, that's just absurd.

We have FAR more evidence for BF than that shaman has for his plant's effectiveness. We have well over a century of eyewitness testimonies (much longer than that if you include the aboriginal accounts), decades of documented track finds (including photos AND casts), forensically typed hairs, blood/dna work, film/video/still photos, audio recordings, and so forth.

You can sit around and nitpick details of chain-of-custody, and theorize about "contamination", but unless you're prepared to PROVE that the evidence is "tainted", all that is is more words that don't change the material facts to hand, i.e. the evidence.

Lord give me patience. You just said it yourself, you have to prove your evidence is valid to the scientific community and there are certain specific things you have to document that you did to assure that happens. I guess you haven't read much on herbal medicine so I'm letting your shaman comment slide.

[southernyahoo]

Where science applies to bigfoot ( a hypothesised bilogical entity) there is just a handfull of categories of evidence to collect.

1. complete specimen

2. physical parts of a specimen

3. scat

4. tracks

5. photo/ videos

6. vocalizations/ audio

7. structures/ nests/ tree damage.

There are certainly some things you could do as you collect this evidence to establish where, when and how it was done, but any proof will be within the evidence itself, not in the protocals. The protocals only lend some confidence that the evidence likely isn't contaminated, distorted, damaged or potentially hoaxed. I think the protocals would be used more if there was productive methods in use that produce said evidence reliably, but the finds seem so sporadic that collection protocals often aren't known by the discoverer.

[southernyahoo]

But which journals HAVE rejected bigfoot submissions? Where is this evidence of rejection that we keep hearing about but never see?

More elusive than bigfoot it seems.

RayG

I didn't say any had rejected a submitted paper Ray, but I am looking for a list that wouldn't reject one on the basis that it was not in their purview.

Edited May 1, 2011 by southernyahoo

[Guest]

I didn't say any had rejected a submitted paper Ray, but I am looking for a list that wouldn't reject one on the basis that it was not in their purview.

Quilters Monthly? There are dozens of journals that would gladly publish a paper documenting a new species of hominin from North America (basically, any journal that has ever published the description of an new species would qualify). I guess I'm missing your point.

Mulder, I'm just going to take your responses as a "no": you can provide no evidence of an editorial bias against publishing a paper that would describe bigfoot as a new species. I kindly ask that you take the higher road an cease to spread the unsupported notion that there is.

[Guest]

I guess you haven't read much on herbal medicine so I'm letting your shaman comment slide.

Actually, I have read some on it, and while I'm not 100% convinced, I wouldn't dismiss the shaman's claims out of hand. The aboriginal people did great things health and healing wise with roots and herbs for 1000s of years before "science" came along and told them "it's all nonsense". Take a look at the history of pharmacology and see how many useful drugs (such as aspirin) were derived from simple, natural sources.

[Guest]

Actually, I have read some on it, and while I'm not 100% convinced, I wouldn't dismiss the shaman's claims out of hand. The aboriginal people did great things health and healing wise with roots and herbs for 1000s of years before "science" came along and told them "it's all nonsense". Take a look at the history of pharmacology and see how many useful drugs (such as aspirin) were derived from simple, natural sources.

I already know.