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

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

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".

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