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

[Guest]

"Hand-picked" = stacked deck

Pull the reviewers randomly from a pool of qualified professionals who are admitted ONLY on the basis of their technical competence, not their opinions on any given topic.

Mulder, please. Your ignorance of the process is showing again. Why do you continue to rush to judgment on this topic?

If you have a pool of 50 or 100 people who are fully competent to review a manuscript, you have to have some criteria for developing a short list of people to ask. Your goal as an editor is to get at least three solid reviews; to do that you might need to ask 5 or 10 people, some of whom will be unavailable at any given time. (In my experience, we usually are given 30 days to complete a review.) So how do you select the initial pool?

The main criterion for selection is the person's reputation as a reviewer. Does the person actually complete the reviews sent to him/her? (Some people agree to review and leave you hanging.) Has the person ever written a lousy (e.g., biased or shoddy) review? Does the person provide in-depth and thoughtful analysis of submitted manuscripts? These qualities are NOT universal among established scientists. Like anything else, some of us are good at this part of the job and some are not, and it's completely independent of our training or "technical competence."

That's what I meant by "hand-picked." If you think editors are sitting around with a list of anti-bigfoot scientists ready to crush any such manuscript submitted for their review then I really can't help you.

[Guest]

Here, I've modified Cromer's quote so it's applicable to bigfoot:

"If the evidence is convincing enough, the skeptics scientific journal editors will in time accept almost anything, even that the continents are drifting bigfoot is frolicking 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."

Classic "either/or" fallacy. "Not proven" =/= "doesn't exist".

[Guest]

So there it is, The potential is there for the laymen bigfoot hunters to be held to an even higher standard because they are afforded no honor. Is that bias?

If it's bias, then the blame lies with the hucksters who've been in bed with bigfootery since the beginning. It's not the scientists who've been hoaxing bigfoot all these years.

But what does it matter? Let's say someone submits a manuscript demonstrating a DNA analysis of hairs that unambiguously point to an extant, new hominin. A reviewer might ask for a description of how the hairs were obtained. So? The author provides additional information on how they were obtained - big deal. If the hairs are authentic, that's ultimately all that matters.

[southernyahoo]

Right, in this case where there is so much uncertainty about the samples origins, I could see the reviewers wanting some provenance of where, when and how they were collected. It is by your own admission a standard above the usual paper regarding wildlife surveys. It may not be biased to want that, it's more inline with the standard of describing a new species, and I'd meet any reviewer with that provenance if they wanted to see it.

If it's bias, then the blame lies with the hucksters who've been in bed with bigfootery since the beginning.

I can't do anything about them in the long run, I can only try to get beyond them. Many of the hoaxers do their work because they percieve this whole thing to be a joke, and that may affect those scientists who would otherwise engage the subject, it's simply time for the proponents to work together and put the goods on the table, if they have any. Thats the only thing that will change the game IMO.

[Guest]

M too.

[Guest parnassus]

Translated 'Only Behind Kissers Need Apply'

What you have said here is. If a researcher has been critical of a journal or the editors who run it, their work will be rejaected out of hand, no matter the quality of the submission. I would think that the professionals describe would be thick skinned enough to handle some heat.

What I have said here is not what you said.

If you want to do science you must buy into the way science does things. As Saskeptic has pointed out, when and if one gets a rejection notice, one also gets the reviewers comments. Generally if the submission has some merit there will some excellent tips on how to improve the work and make it more suitable for publication. One can either do what has been suggested or one can start barking at the caravan, spewing self righteous indignation. Which path will lead to better science, to a good paper being published in a good journal?

The next time you hear a talk by some Bigfoot authority who blasts the scientific community (often to great applause) why don't you ask them how they expect to succeed in that arena when they are given the instructions and won't follow them. Of course, you'd probably be clubbed with baseball bats for your trouble.

[southernyahoo]

The next time you hear a talk by some Bigfoot authority who blasts the scientific community (often to great applause)

Ugh, I'm going to need a good citation on this one Parn. Then I'm going to ask who is blasting who here. Do you really feel you are properly representing the scientific communities position with your accusations? Have you even heard a talk on bigfoot?

Well, since human hair IS indistinguishable from human hair, and alleged sasquatch hair HAS been declared indistinguishable from human hair, I really don't see how it would prove anything.

RayG

Well where Ketchums study is concerned, there are hairs in the study that do not conform to Henners criteria. I can personally atest to that since he examined hairs from the same sample I sent Ketchum and he said they were bear hairs. Ketchum says they have human and animal characteristcs. Who do you think is more correct?

Edited May 4, 2011 by masterbarber

[Guest]

Who do you think is more correct?

To publish on such material it will be important to be correct, not just more correct than someone who is really incorrect.

[Guest RayG]

Who do you think is more correct?

How do we know they're both not correct? Is it possible that bear hairs have some human characteristics and human hairs have some bear characteristics?

Did Fahrenbach do DNA testing? Did Ketchum arrive at that conclusion based on DNA testing or through microscopic analysis? Does anyone have detailed results from either of them?

We really need more details before making any determination.

RayG

[southernyahoo]

How do we know they're both not correct? Is it possible that bear hairs have some human characteristics and human hairs have some bear characteristics?

Actually Bear hair is said to be the most similar to human so that could be one explanation. It could also be said that humans and bears share some charcteristcs.

Did Fahrenbach do DNA testing?

No he did his quick morphological exam, too quick in my opinion.

Did Ketchum arrive at that conclusion based on DNA testing or through microscopic analysis?

I'm going with both for now.

Does anyone have detailed results from either of them?

The detailed results are to be published, and I'll get a copy at that time. This was part of her NDA.

We really need more details before making any determination.

I agree, I have to wait like everyone else though, but I'm patient.

But while we are waiting, check this out. Hairs have been uncovered in archeological sites which have been identified as bear by FBI labs, and then human DNA was extracted.

Read down through page 428.

http://books.google.com/books?id=2tQLRHdQxD4C&pg=PA427&dq=primate+hair+micrographs&hl=en&ei=aC6BTZnKPMLbgQeT6Y2gCA&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CCkQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=primate%20hair%20micrographs&f=false

[Guest]

I found this link to hair analysis done by the Alabama Bigfoot Research Forum not too long ago from one of Kit's links to a dumpster report on another thread:

I recently posed that question to Dr. Fahrenbach. In his e-mail response he stated:

"The sasquatch could absolutely not be human! It takes more than walking on two legs - penguins do that, too. No tools, language, fire, culture - you name it - not human. The two micrographs of reddish hair do look suspiciously like sasquatch hair - compare them to the hair pictures in the BFRO website. All the other micrographs are mostly to show the effort, but have no diagnostic value, as far as I am concerned. In my days, I looked at hundreds of hairs (their surface only) with the scanning electron microscope - the Primate Center had a Department of Cutaneous Biology - and I couldn't tell one from the other by cuticle pattern over a wide range of animals, if the hair had some reasonably average diameter. One of the other pictures does show some fragmentary medulla, but I have had some sasquatch hair that had also some of that, so I don't let that rule BF hair out. But obviously human and sasquatch hair have considerable similarities, but don't let that seduce you into thinking that it means they are phylogenetically close. There is no reason why hair couldn't evolve in a direction of its own, if that change doesn't impart any reproductive advantage or disadvantage (within the general frame of the mammalian family in question). So I would chalk it up as a possible, but not lose much sleep over it."

So it doesn't look like he does DNA analysis, however Ketchum is doing DNA analysis on her samples. I don't know anything about what she has gotten so far, how many replications she can do with each sample, if someone else if looking at the results, etc.....but I would think that would be necessary for a paper to hold any weight. Am I wrong?

Edited May 4, 2011 by Jodie

[Huntster]

If it's bias, then the blame lies with the hucksters who've been in bed with bigfootery since the beginning.

I can't do anything about them in the long run, I can only try to get beyond them. Many of the hoaxers do their work because they percieve this whole thing to be a joke, and that may affect those scientists who would otherwise engage the subject, it's simply time for the proponents to work together and put the goods on the table, if they have any. Thats the only thing that will change the game IMO.

M too.

Then law enforcement is not doing their job prosecuting fraud any more than official wildlife managers are doing checking into sasquatch reports.

If ya’ll really want to rely on poachers or truck drivers to deliver the goods, why don’t you up the ante a little? Just open a hunting season on sasquatches: open all year, limit of one. Indeed, a reward of $5,000 will be paid, but the carcass has to be surrendered to the state. If wildlife managers are so convinced that sasquatches don’t exist, then none will be shot, right? And if police won’t police up the frauds, just a couple of them getting drilled might end the hoaxing, right?

Win/win.

[Guest RayG]

Sure sounds like a good idea, as long as every hunter is as responsible as you or I.

However, since every hunter isn't that responsible, declaring a year-round open season on a human-like bipedal target is probably not such a good idea.

"Honest judge, I thought he was a bigfoot!"

RayG

[Guest]

Then law enforcement is not doing their job prosecuting fraud any more than official wildlife managers are doing checking into sasquatch reports.

That's a good point. Sure would be fun to see the BFRO on trial for fraud . . .

[Drew]

DNR CHIEF: Officer, why didn't you respond to that poaching incident near Campsite 9?

DNR OFFICER: I was responding to a report of Sasquatch near the park entrance.

DNR CHIEF: Oh, OK, as long as you were doing something important.

Seriously, they are not going to admit to responding to Sasquatch, until there is evidence of it's existence. I started an evidence thread here at BFF, and none was proferred.