lenbrazil
Saturn
Now there's a man with an open mind - you can feel the breeze from here!
Posts: 1,045
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Post by lenbrazil on Mar 10, 2006 18:34:52 GMT -4
I am suspicious of the peer reviews that approved papers about 9/11 written by Drs. Jones, Griffin and Fetzer. Jones’ and Griffin’s papers were approved for publication in “The Hidden History of 9/11” a special edition of a Marxist economics journal edited by Paul Zarembeka. Jones decided not to publish his paper in that journal but rather in a “9/11 and the American Empire: Intellectuals speak out” a book edited by Griffin and P.D. Scott. Fetzer’s paper “passed” “peer review” for Griffin and Scott’s book but he decided not to publish it there.
I wrote Fetzer, Zarembeka, Jones and Griffin. Fetzer has not replied and the other three have been less than totally forth coming, the say that the papers were peer reviewed “anonymously” to ensure objectivity. I know that this is a common practice, but are peer reviews always done anonymously? Does this vary between various areas of specialty?
It also seems strange to me that a physics/structural engineering paper would be peer reviewed for an economics journal and a book edited by retired professors of English and theology/philosophy.
There is also the question of conflict of interest, Zarembeka, Griffin and Scott all subscribe to a controversial theory (that the WTC was demolished using explosives) and they chose reviewers to evaluate papers backing the same theory for books or journals they were editing promoting that theory. I.E. it was not in their vested interest to select reviewers who might have rejected the papers. If that weren’t bad enough Jones, Fetzer and Griffin are frequent collaborators. Griffin is a full member of ST9/11 a group founded by Jones and Fetzer and their site published papers he wrote. They frequently appear together for interviews etc etc. I imagine the editor of a reputable academic journal would recuse himself in a similar situation.
To make a long story short I suspect that Griffin, Zarembeka and Jones are hiding behind the principle of anonymous peer review to justify the “rubber stamping” of those papers.
I seek especially comments from those who are more familiar with the peer regview process than I am.
Len
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Post by Retrograde on Mar 10, 2006 19:22:49 GMT -4
I wrote Fetzer, Zarembeka, Jones and Griffin. Fetzer has not replied and the other three have been less than totally forth coming, the say that the papers were peer reviewed “anonymously” to ensure objectivity. I know that this is a common practice, but are peer reviews always done anonymously? Does this vary between various areas of specialty? Every review I have been associated with (giving or receiving) has been anonymous at least as far as the reviewer is concerned; the author's identity may or may not be known to the reviewer, depending on the journal, but if the reviewer doesn't know how to use Google, well there's not much else to say, is there. I can't really say if these practices are universal across fields, they are the practices I know.
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lenbrazil
Saturn
Now there's a man with an open mind - you can feel the breeze from here!
Posts: 1,045
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Post by lenbrazil on Mar 11, 2006 11:19:43 GMT -4
Do you know if there are any rules or customs governing a situation in which the person(s) choosing the reviewers has a vested interested in the papers passing peer review?
I suspect the editors chose reviewers who were unlikely to reject the paper.
K.O.S – Should I address you as Dr. K.O.S? What is your area of specialty?
Len
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Post by Retrograde on Mar 11, 2006 22:55:21 GMT -4
Commenting on the different parts of your post out of order... K.O.S – Should I address you as Dr. K.O.S? What is your area of specialty? Well, that's awfully formal, don't you think? Supreme Evil Overlord will be fine ;D I'm a rather interdisciplinary sort of person, I function at the boundaries of economics, finance, mathematics, and statistics. Do you know if there are any rules or customs governing a situation in which the person(s) choosing the reviewers has a vested interested in the papers passing peer review? As nearly as I can tell, it is entirely up to the editor. I have heard of cases (can I substantiate them - probably not) in which the editor did the review himself because he couldn't find anyone who would give the "correct" answer. I have had my recommendations overridden (in both directions) by editors; I also had an editor override a recommendation (to reject) on a paper I had submitted (although that particular paper isn't out of the woods yet). In some areas, it seems the criterion for publication is technical correctness. In other areas, a paper which is completely correct may still be rejected, on the grounds that it isn't interesting or important enough. In that case, the paper can be published in a lower-tier journal; I am currently in the process of reviewing a paper at one journal (where it will probably be accepted) which I had already gotten rejected somewhere else. Of course, if a paper has clear flaws, it can sometimes still be published if the reviewer does a sloppy job... I suspect the editors chose reviewers who were unlikely to reject the paper. It is entirely possible; such things have been known to happen. My opinion is, the peer review process is certainly better than publishing any old crap anyone submits, but it is a long way from perfect. There can be, of course, perfectly honest points of disagreement, but there certainly is a temptation for editors to use their power to support what is obviously (to them) the "correct" viewpoint. But I feel like this doesn't really matter so much at the journal level, because there is competition in the journal market. If a journal gets a reputation for being biased, it's quite easy for the disaffected to start a new journal. Far more serious to my way of thinking would be use of access to critical facilities to control what people are able to get published. In my areas, this isn't so much of an issue either, because anyone with a paper and pencil and maybe a few computers can conduct research in these fields. But for physical sciences and engineering, maybe access to certain facilities is critical, and if the director of the lab or whatever it is thinks you're a total dufus, well, not much you can do...but on this point, I'm just speculating, I don't really know for sure. Definitely I don't support the viewpoint, well, it appeared in a peer reviewed journal, therefore it must be correct. My view is that, being published in a peer reviewed journal is correlated with being good, but it's a less than perfect correlation. One of the less pleasant lunches I had was with a person who spent much of the time berating the idiotic reviewer who was obviously too stupid to appreciate the genius of her work, apparently unaware that I was the reviewer. I deemed it too risky to point out some of the problems with the paper, as this might have given her a clue as to the identity of the reviewer... Well, that's my $0.02 worth...
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Post by drjohn on Mar 12, 2006 18:25:23 GMT -4
Let me give you my experience of peer review. I published about 25 papers and reviewed probably as many.
When you write a paper for a journal, you submit it to one of the technical editors. Typically, he or she is someone who is familiar with your area of research. If you don't know them you might call them to be sure. After you submit your paper to the technical editor, they will review personally to ensure that it is new and original research and to make sure that it is acceptable to the journal. If so, the editor will send it to at least three other reviewers who are specialists on the topic of your paper. The people will anonymously (they can choose to reveal themselves) review your paper and then send their comments, suggestions and questions back to the editor. The editor will review the reviewer's comments and make a decision to accept or reject your paper. The editor will then send his/her decision back to you along with the comments. My experience has been that my papers are accepted on the first round usually with some comments. The authors then fix up the paper and send it back to editor for final review to ensure that the comments are incorporated and if not why. After final acceptance it take about 3-6 to get it in print.
Many companies also have internal reviewers as well. In addition, all US companies have to abide by the import/export laws when publishing papers, so they is always a cursory review of the papers.
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Post by drjohn on Mar 12, 2006 18:32:17 GMT -4
One of the less pleasant lunches I had was with a person who spent much of the time berating the idiotic reviewer who was obviously too stupid to appreciate the genius of her work, apparently unaware that I was the reviewer. I deemed it too risky to point out some of the problems with the paper, as this might have given her a clue as to the identity of the reviewer... I had almost the same experience. My made a comment like "I think the authors have something useful to say, but I can't understand their English" Later at a conference, I met the man and he said he got a review back saying that one of the reviewers said he couldn't write. I found out later that he had one of his visiting scholars from Red China write the paper and he didn't review it because he was on sabatical.
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Post by drjohn on Mar 12, 2006 18:37:32 GMT -4
My gut feeling is this. They couldn't get their article published in a structural journal so they went this route. I've this before. There is some guy, Thomas Chalko, who claims that global warming will cause the Earth to explode because it will increase core temperatures and cause a nuclear explosion. He originally tried to submit it to the Journal of Geophysics (IIRC) and then he started his own journal to pubish it.
P.S. I didn't review this paper, I saw a preliminary copy on his website were he said that it was under review by Journal of Geophysics.
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Post by echnaton on Mar 13, 2006 0:26:39 GMT -4
My brief experiment with academic life studying Finance showed me one thing about publishing. That since there is a requirement that professors publish, there must be a way for them to publish. That is some journals are there largely to let assistant professors publish so they can get tenure, but very little published in those journals will ever get cited in work that gets into the major journals. So while peer review is a good system, it is no better than the quality of the journal and the strength of the editors and reviewers.
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