Peer Review Scandals

[Paul Colin de Glouceſter]

On July 21st, 2014, Dowman P Varn submitted:
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|"Davis & Stephen,                                                           |
|I come from a physics background, and much what you discuss bears little    |
|resemblance to the facts on the ground. No one given a manuscript would ever|
|try to replicate the results."                                              |
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Dear Dowman:

Many articles which the putative physicist Jan Hendrik Schoen
contributed to were subjected to retractions because physicists who
were attempting to do impossible things which Schoen fraudulently
boasted he performed have been unable to replicate what Jan Hendrik
Schoen has dishonestly claimed to have accomplished.

Note that when replication is performed, it might not be performed for
its own sake, but instead merely as steps towards another advance
progressing past what is being replicated.

More than one physical principle is used for various types of for
example altimeter, and measuring altitude by a ruler or by
trigonometry or by air pressure. Measurements of a single property by
different techniques can be considered to be a form of replication.

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|" It could take months of full time work, and is                            |
|simply an unreasonable burden on the reviewer."                             |
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It could take less time or more time depending on what is being
replicated. It would not be an unreasonable burden if the refereeing
was being paid for with an amount of money comparable to the original
research. Publishers charge a lot of money without earning it.

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|" Science would just stop."                                                 |
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I disagree. Would you like to take a drug which happens to be lethal
instead of the mistaken claim that it is a medicine because no
laboratory was paid to confirm or refute the original article?

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|"The purpose of peer-review (and yes, I use that term in the sense of an    |
|expert reading and evaluating a manuscript for publication, as this is the  |
|common vernacular in my field) is not to ensure that the results are        |
|correct."                                                                   |
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Even today publishers refer to refereeing as quality control.

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|"[. . .]                                                                    |
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|[. . .]                                                                     |
|[. . .] I don't read a journal article as gospel, but                       |
|rather as a document where I cast the onus on the authors to convince me of |
|something. Often I'm not convinced. There are entire little subfields that, |
|in my opinion, are founded on flawed assumptions, and therefore the         |
|conclusions reached are dubious. I recognise that that is just my opinion,  |
|and I don't begrudge them (too much) for the work they do, because I realise|
|that I may be wrong."                                                       |
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Perhaps you are not mistaken. Perhaps you should type papers about
these possibly flawed assumptions and possibly dubious conclusions.

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|"As for the issue of fraud, peer review is not the place to catch it, unless|
|it is rather inartfully done. How can say that an observation wasn't made?" |
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Measurements should be made available antecedently before typescripts
utilizing them are submitted. Physicists are lagging behind
inventors of medicines from this point of view.

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|"How can I say that the result of a detailed calculation is wrong?"         |
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By checking it! (Too many papers skip steps of derivations.)

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|" I'm not                                                                   |
|going to do it myself."                                                     |
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That is your choice, but you might be more inclined to check it if you
ran software such as an automated theorem prover or a computer algebra
system.

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|" As a reviewer, I can point out the objections and                         |
|concerns of a expert, perhaps many that the authors had yet to consider, but|
|at the end of the day, it is their contribution to the conversation. If they|
|have something interesting to say, can explain it in a reasonable way, and  |
|are sufficiently familiar with the state of field to discuss it             |
|intelligently, who am I to say they are wrong?"                             |
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You are a fellow scientist.

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|" That is for the community to                                              |
|decide. And, in my opinion, that is how science should work.                |
|                                                                            |
|Best regards,                                                               |
|                                                                            |
|Dowman"                                                                     |
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We suffer from incorrect informational cascades that way.

With best regards,
Paul Colin de Glouceſter