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The Journal of Cosmology Strikes Again!
A while back, in a discussion somewhere on USENET, I saw a reference
to an article in an online journal called "The Journal of Cosmology". I visited the web site, and I was not impressed. It seemed to me that it was not a real online journal, even though submitters of papers were asked to submit a list of peers who could review them. That's not quite impartial peer review, and it seemed like there was a lot of crank material in that online journal. Well, now they've made the headlines. A NASA scientist has published there the claim that structures similar to bacterial fossils can be found in some meteorites. That would have been (very mildly) exciting news under the best of circumstances... as it would take a bit more before this could be confirmed. But under these circumstances, it seems to me that either the scientist or the media was fooled. John Savard |
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The Journal of Cosmology Strikes Again!
On Mar 6, 12:33*pm, Chris L Peterson wrote:
And note that the headlines were the result of an exclusive interview with Fox News, which really triggers my BS filters... It's true that they're the Alien Autopsy station, and their political reporting... leaves something to be desired... but compared to the Journal of Cosmology, they're still respectable. At least in its case, NASA can do damage control without being accused of being biased against the Tea Party. John Savard |
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The Journal of Cosmology Strikes Again!
On 3/6/11 11:46 AM, Quadibloc wrote:
A while back, in a discussion somewhere on USENET, I saw a reference to an article in an online journal called "The Journal of Cosmology". I visited the web site, and I was not impressed. It seemed to me that it was not a real online journal, even though submitters of papers were asked to submit a list of peers who could review them. That's not quite impartial peer review, and it seemed like there was a lot of crank material in that online journal. Well, now they've made the headlines. A NASA scientist has published there the claim that structures similar to bacterial fossils can be found in some meteorites. That would have been (very mildly) exciting news under the best of circumstances... as it would take a bit more before this could be confirmed. But under these circumstances, it seems to me that either the scientist or the media was fooled. John Savard Scientists dismiss alien life report http://www.latimes.com/news/science/...,5561322.story "NASA has distanced itself from Hoover's work. In an unusual step Monday, Paul Hertz, chief scientist of NASA's science mission directorate, issued a statement saying, among other things, that "NASA cannot stand behind or support a scientific claim unless it has been peer-reviewed or thoroughly examined by other qualified experts.... NASA was unaware of the recent submission of the paper to the Journal of Cosmology or of the paper's subsequent publication." "The Journal of Cosmology is a 2-year-old publication developed by Rudy Schild of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics that has unabashedly promoted the thesis that life exists throughout the universe and was brought to Earth from elsewhere. The journal has published just 13 issues and, in a news release Monday, said it would cease publication in May, "killed by thieves and crooks" at the journal Science and other subscription-based periodicals, whom it has accused of stifling its ability to distribute news. "The Journal of Cosmology claims to be peer-reviewed. In this case, the journal's editors said it had sent a copy of Hoover's article to 100 prominent scientists for critiques and would publish them as they come in. In normal scientific publishing, peer review is conducted before a paper is published to ensure accuracy". |
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The Journal of Cosmology Strikes Again!
On Mar 7, 11:35*pm, Sam Wormley quoted, in part:
"The Journal of Cosmology claims to be peer-reviewed. In this case, the journal's editors said it had sent a copy of Hoover's article to 100 prominent scientists for critiques and would publish them as they come in. In normal scientific publishing, peer review is conducted before a paper is published to ensure accuracy". This quoted item from the article is actually, loath as I may be to admit it, *unfair* to the Journal of Cosmology. If you go to their guidelines for authors, you will see that it does perform peer review prior to publication. However, this peer-review process does not fully conform to the usual academic norms. For the Journal of Cosmology, as can be seen here, http://journalofcosmology.com/AuthorGuidelines.html it is the responsibility of the author of a paper to locate five suitable peers to review it prior to publication. Note that they may not be an author's friends or colleagues. If a referee recommends a paper not be published, he must provide solid "detailed fact-based evidence" for this. This departs from the usual academic norms, of course, as follows: Normal scientific journals have their own pools of reviewers, who are fully anonymous to the authors of papers. If a reviewer notes that a submitted paper smells like something from Velikovsky, the journal thanks him for the timely warning that has rescued its reputation - it doesn't demand that he spend a lot of time giving them detailed fact-based evidence that there's something wrong with it. So it is not true that the Journal of Cosmology has _no_ peer review prior to publication. It has _vitiated_ peer review prior to publication. It really does make an effort to pull the wool over the eyes of the unsuspecting. John Savard |
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