Re: [asa] Is Peer-Review the Be All and End All of Science?

On 11/16/06, Pim van Meurs <pimvanmeurs@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>
> So now ID is whining that peer review is broken or that peer review
> is not that important. Perhaps if ID could point to any non begging
> ID relevant papers? But of course they cannot and thus have to find
> an alternative explanation as to why ID remains scientifically
> vacuous.
>
>
> Behe's refused 'paper' was about a 'rebuttal' , Meyer's paper about
> the Cambrian was of dubious quality.

The Meyers paper is actually a good example of broken peer review but
not in the way the ID folk want to spin it.

On September 7 2004, the publisher of Proceedings of the Biological
Society of Washington, the Council of the Biological Society of
Washington, released a statement repudiating the article written by
Meyers:

The paper by Stephen C. Meyer, "The origin of biological information
and the higher taxonomic categories," in vol. 117, no. 2, pp. 213-239
of the Proceedings of the Biological Society of Washington, was
published at the discretion of the former editor, Richard v.
Sternberg. Contrary to typical editorial practices, the paper was
published without review by any associate editor; Sternberg handled
the entire review process. The Council, which includes officers,
elected councilors, and past presidents, and the associate editors
would have deemed the paper inappropriate for the pages of the
Proceedings because the subject matter represents such a significant
departure from the nearly purely systematic content for which this
journal has been known throughout its 122-year history.
-- http://www.biolsocwash.org/id_statement.html

Richard Sternberg replied:
". . .Three reviewers responded and were willing to review the paper;
all are experts in relevant aspects of evolutionary and molecular
biology and hold full-time faculty positions in major research
institutions, one at an Ivy League university, another at a major
North American public university, a third on a well-known overseas
research faculty. There was substantial feedback from reviewers to the
author, resulting in significant changes to the paper. The reviewers
did not necessarily agree with Dr. Meyer's arguments or his conclusion
but all found the paper meritorious and concluded that it warranted
publication. . . . four well-qualified biologists with five PhDs in
relevant disciplines were of the professional opinion that the paper
was worthy of publication..."
-- http://www.rsternberg.net/Procedures.htm

Recently, so-called open peer review has been proposed. This would
make the names of the reviewers along with the content of their
feedback public. As it stands, the Meyers case appears to be an
example of editorial misconduct on the part of Richard Sternberg. If
Ms. O'Leary is so fond of openness why doesn't she put on her
reporter's cap, find and interview the peer reviewers, and see what
their "substantial feedback" was. Finally, it should be noted that
this paper was a literature review and not original research.

That's my take as a scientist. Now my take as a Christian. We need to
be very, very careful not to cry wolf. This year I submitted two
papers to the LSI Logic Technical Conference, both of which were
rejected without comment. This is directly analogous to what we are
discussing, a sample of two and the author was a Christian. Do I go to
the review committee and complain about persecution? Nonsense. The
papers simply didn't make the grade. All this complaining about being
shut out of peer review gets filtered down to the average person in
the pew. I have personally witnessed this at church. They seem to
think that Chistians are completly shut out of the scientific and
engineering endeavor. While there is always politics and individual
examples where this may be true, painting this as widescale
persecution cheapens the sacrifice of many of our brothers' and
sisters' sacrifice who are literally martyred for their faith.

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Received on Wed Nov 22 00:15:44 2006