Freethinkaluva

My first sense from that link is that it reads like it came straight out of the JP Holding camp. By "CONMAN"? And the e-mail contact goes to "Mika"? what are this persons qualifications and why such an axe to grind? I get the sense that it is full of straw man fallacies.

And I don't see that how that diatribe has anything to do with the topic of this thread on the subject of "peer review".

~M~

did you just call Newton an ancient scientist?

andrewcriddle

Joanne Conman is apparently a published writer in peer-reviewed journals eg Source of Information http://members.optusnet.com.au/~gtosiris/page4.html where she is described as a competent amateur Egyptologist

Andrew Criddle

Freethinkaluva

Again, it appears Conman jumped the gun by reaching out to attack an "informal commentary" unreasonably. Must be looking for attention. And again, I see no reason for this type of tirade to be posted here. What Conman offers here is not a legitimate peer review. It is simply an attack on an informal article.

andrewcriddle

My point was simply that the fact that a controversial figure like Krupp is apparently sympathetic to Gerald Hawkins ideas falls short of those ideas being "widely accepted"

There is a critical discussion of some of Hawkins' claims at http://www.anima.demon.co.uk/stonehenge/astronomy.html
See Also http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archaeo...and_Stonehenge

Andrew Criddle

Freethinkaluva

<edit>

Egyptologists are not astronomers as made clear by an Egyptologist and Archaeologist Paul Haanen.

<edit>

DCHindley

I'm scratching my head over his thread.

Almost all of that I see identified as "peer review" here is really confirmation of experimental results. That is NOT the ame thing as "peer review." Peer review is the publicaton of the experiment, study or paper in a technical publication read by the researcher's peers so that they have an opportunity to evaluate the researcher's argumentation and treatment of evidence.

If it is an experiment that is being written about, only then does anyone attempt to try the experiment using the same conditions to see if the results can be replicated. Even when they are, they then try fiddling with the variables that shouldn't matter to see if they can screw it up in subsequent tries, which is an indication that the experiment's assumptions were wrong and there is an uncontrolled variable influencing the results. However, there are no experiments in history.


Anyhow, peer review is just that, review of the article or study by the author's peers, and does not prove or disprove anything. However, it does give the community a chance to evaluate whether new researches "walk the walk and talk the talk" and whether old hands are still sharp as a tack or a little dull with age, or even "off their meds."

DCH

Freethinkaluva

<complaint about moderator action removed>

DCHindley

Free,

Peer review is what peer review does. One of the other factors involved with peer review publications is that the article is simply not published unless it gets a vetting by a review committee. Some articles that do get published were rejected several times by journals before that publication. The author usually takes the criticism in stride, revises the article, and submits again. Occasionally, the same article is only slightly rvised and submitted to a different journal with a different emphasis. Someimes journals have their likes and dislikes, and you can't please everyone.

Conman, it seems, differs with Otto Neugebauer over Egyptian decans. Otto is well known in the literature, but rather opinionated. However, sh wrote a nicely researched article to contest his position, and it was accepted by the peer review committee of the jounal. Seems she also disagrees with Krupp, although in this case it looks like the objection was in the form of a letter to the editor of a popular magazine.

DCH