RufusAtticus

We Don't

Doubting Didymus

A hundred trained professionals got it wrong... Better do it yourself, alone.

Tat

No question peer-review works to keep out the nuts and crazys. It sure ain't perfect however, and Helen points out some of the shortcommings.

Other models of scientific communication are emerging. A more peer to peer framework, such as e-print arXiv, are becoming increasingly relied upon for communication in the math and physical sciences.

ArXiv has only a cursory review of new articles, relying on the reader to sort out good results (many papers submitted are destined for peer-reviewed publication anyway). They do occasionally disallow nutty articles, though. In fact they recently got sued for it.

Other models are occasionally discussed, such as author-pays systems (as opposed to reader-pays). There was an article (caution, PDF) which discussed these trends posted on arXiv a while back, in terms of mathematical communication.

There are many interesting questions which arise from such systems: copyrights, redistibution, ownership, censorship and quality control. It is an interesting question whether this model would work as well in the social sciences.

The current system of extensive peer-review is not likely to change wholesale overnight. This is a good thing, since the system works pretty well. But other models of communication are on the horizon, and the benefits and drawbacks of these systems is recieving scant attention.

To what extent does Helen have a point that creationists are being censored? Not much of one. While it may be possible for an unethical scientist in a relativly obscure field to interefere with publication of some new idea, at least for a short time, the idea that every scientist colludes to refuse the publication of otherwise sound reseach in a wide range of diciplines is preposterous. But I suspect everyone here knew that.

Is good science possible without peer review? Maybe. ArXiv seems to be evidence that it is, though it has not survived the test of time.

pangloss

Helen must be beside herself - her own personal soap box!

Free from detractors!



It is interesting to see what creationist "moderation" can accomplish -....

MrDarwin

In biology, at least, I think author-pays is much more prevalent than reader-pays. Most journals have very small circulations and cannot possibly pay their publication costs by subscriptions alone.

I think peer review is extremely important. A paper published in a non-peer reviewed journal is always going to have less prestige and less credibility. Unfortunately, in these days of instant or near-instant communication, there's a lot more pressure to turn papers around quickly (the peer review process can be glacially slow), and now we have the possibility of posting them on the web to reach a world-wide audience pretty much instantaneously, and cheaply to boot.

And there's the catch for those complaining about peer review: anybody can publish absolutely anything these days. So where are the websites that are publishing all these creationist research papers that have been rejected by the mainstream "evolutionist"-dominated peer-reviewed journals???

KC

Why, at the CRS Quarterly , of course. For a real laugh, take a gander at the article Genetics: Enemy of Evolution? by Lane Lester, who has a PhD in Genetics from the University of Wisconsin. This is the epitome of peer-reviewed creationist original research.

Cheers,

KC

RufusAtticus

Well the baptistboard disc has been updated.

Jimmy Higgins

I thought peer review was proportional to either:

a) the number of websites that you link to in a post

or

b) Your consistent attitude that you "know" the truth.