Re: Hoax Article Accepted by OA Bentham Journal

From: Stevan Harnad <harnad_at_ecs.soton.ac.uk>
Date: Mon, 15 Jun 2009 19:25:05 -0400

If anyone is interested in thinking seriously about peer review --
what it is (qualified specialists vetting specialized work,
answerably), and what it is for -- rather than just opining randomly,
please do have a look at:
      Harnad, S. (1998/2000/2004) The invisible hand of peer
      review. Nature [online] (5 Nov. 1998), Exploit
      Interactive 5 (2000): and in Shatz, B. (2004) (ed.) Peer
      Review: A Critical Inquiry. Rowland & Littlefield. Pp.
      235-242. http://cogprints.org/1646/


Davis & Anderson's exposé was welcome, appropriate and timely. I hope
it will be repeated, over and over, with journal after journal,
whether OA or non-OA, new or old. D & A's certainly was not the first
such sting operation: Sokal's is well-known. But there have been
others before that too. They are all welcome and salutary, and their
only shortcoming is that they are too few:

      Harnad, S. (ed.) (1982) Peer commentary on peer review: A
      case study in scientific quality control, New York:
      Cambridge University Press.

      Peer-review practices of psychological journals: The fate
      of published articles, submitted again
      DP Peters, SJ Ceci - Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 1982
      Cited by 289 - Related articles 


Waiting for such exposés are not only prominent cases like
the Bogdanov Balderdash, the El Naschie Nonsense, and of course the
recent Pharmomercial scams. The price of reliable quality is constant
viglance.

Stevan Harnad

On 15-Jun-09, at 5:58 PM, Thomas Krichel wrote:

      B.G. Sloan writes

            Thomas Krichel writes: "...we all know that
            peer review is a

            vague concept to the point of being useless."


            Really? I don't mean to sound naive or
            skeptical. Can Thomas

            Krichel point us to some empirical studies
            that show peer

            review is useless?


      Can B.G. Sloan point us to some empirical studies that
      measure
      the extend of usefulness of peer review?

      I have not studied the empirical evidence that is
      formally
      published. I have seen enough errors in peer reviewed
      papers
      personally but I can't spend my time elaborating here
      where these
      errors are. I don't think there is a need to do this.
      "Peer
      reviewed" means some presumed peers have reviewed the
      paper. The
      concept of a "peer" is vague. The concept of a "review"
      is vague.
      The combination of two vague concepts is even more
      vague...

      Cheers,

      Thomas Krichel
                         http://openlib.org/home/krichel
                                    RePEc:per:1965-06-05:thomas_krichel
      new phone: +7 913 748 8056                   skype:
      thomaskrichel
Received on Tue Jun 16 2009 - 01:06:48 BST

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