Silent Dave

That peer review is imperfect is trivial; every human endeavor is imperfect, by definition of human. But the peer review process has successfully ensured that the vast majority of published scientific material is of good quality rather than bad. If you have issue with a particular paper, then contact the authors and/or journal editors with your concerns. (Just try to be more substantive than, "this appears to have ben pulled out of someone's ass."


Peer review isn't an authority, it's a process. One that's demonstrably successful in establishing prima facie quality.

ck1

It may be the case that some papers slip through the process, or some journals are less than rigorous in their standards, but (putting on my editor's hat) you should see the stuff that gets rejected!

Steve_F

I was making a generalised comment, so I didn't need to be particularly more substantive. The fact of the matter is, bad papers exist, plenty of them. Moreover, they generally aren't dealt with by contacting authors or editors (particularly in large communities); what tends to happen is that that consensus is reached informally, around the water cooler if you like. Crappy papers are dealt with by ignoring them, not citing them. It's rarer for them to provoke formal response, unless they are crappy in a highly significant way.

I'm not particularly down on peer review; it's the best system we have. I just don't find arguments that rely on it to be convincing. The best way to show that Dave is wrong is to deal specifically with his points, not shift the burden to peer review.

I don't deny this. However, I see an referral to the ability of peer review as an appeal to authority (of sorts).

deadman_932

Dear Mr. Stevie: Once again, I apologize to you and all the noble Pinhead clan for any offense I may have unintentionally given.

Dave's problems are indeed unrelated to any conical cranial convexity --- his is merely crapulent coprolalic cacophany

ck1

You are, of course, right that Dave's arguments are key, but his latest arguments boil down to a claim that published studies exclude contradictory data points. So this really is an issue of honesty and publication standards.

Steve_F

Fair point. I keep meaning to re-read the original papers to check this dates thing out that has Dave so worked up. I also know a guy supervising a PhD student who works on a Suigetsu core so I might ask him.

ck1

Sorry to beat a dead horse, but one more thought on the peer-review process. I think the major review of any completed project actually occurs after publication. After all, only one editor and a few reviewers get to evaluate a paper before publication, but then the whole community gets to look at it and decide its merit. As mentioned earlier, judgment of published work can be harsh, and many if not most papers sink into oblivion. That is part of the peer review process as well. Published papers are ultimately judged by their citation record - a final and very key part of the process.

ericmurphy

In short, it's just idiotic for Dave to think that an entire subdiscipline of science (dating techniques) is the result of sloppy thinking, lazy experimental technique, and wishful thinking on the part of tens of thousands of scientists. Dating techniques (radiometric and otherwise) are as foundationally solid as the science behind particle accelerators (in fact, in many cases it's the exact same science). The difference is, Dave isn't aware that his worldview is threatened by the results coming out of particle physicist's labs.

Silent Dave

That's probably true, but nonetheless, errors of the sort Dave is charging the Suigetsu scientists with, such as excluding key data that might overturn the end results, would be caught in the peer review process, would they not?

Calilasseia

Er, since when has proving the vacuity and mendacity of creationists constituted 'slander'?

Remember when you told me on RDF to "go and get myself educated" Dave, and abrogated to yourself the right to lecture me about what I should and should not read when you told me to "go and read some creationist literature"? And when I DID just that, and followed your link on that hydroplate nonsense, I found myself staring at a page making a statement that was in direct and egregious violation of elementary laws of physics that I had learned as a schoolboy at twelve years of age? And remember also how I posted the proof that this was so by reference to the National Physical Laboratory in the UK, whose page on critical constants contained the very piece of physics I had learned back then? The relevant post can be found here for the interested reader (excuse the broken subscript and superscript tags, the site has recently migrated to new board software and broken the tags on me - sigh).

This is merely ONE example among MANY of instances where your beloved creationists have made statements that have been WRONG, and PROVABLY WRONG WITH LITTLE EFFORT. Yet those websites where these people beaver away PERSIST in disseminating what is PROVABLY BLATANT FALSEHOOD. Therefore the statements that are made here regarding the mendacity of these people, their wilful abuse of discourse (and I won't have to work hard to point people here to examples where you have engaged in this yourself by the way Dave) are PROVEN statements of the dishonesty of these people, and are therefore NOT slander.

Your assertions about reputable scientists, on the other hand, are simple blind assertions UNSUPPORTED BY FACT. Therefore, if any of those scientists, upon discovering your statements, wish to take action and drag you through the courts, they will have a prima facie case. A case which I for one consider to be utterly bomb proof. Fancy being the next Michael Behe, Dave, having your ass handed to you on a plate in cross examination?

Now, unless you can provide EVIDENCE that reputable scientists are engaged in the kind of skulduggery you have suggested, you might reconsider casting aspersions on people whose diligent labour and intellectual honesty are in many instances a shining example of the very virtues that you, all too frequently, have claimed in the past are 'exclusively Christian', and whose conduct in their respective fields of endeavour puts your creationist 'heroes' to shame.