Einstein and Peer review

Einstein and Peer review | Abhishek Tiwari
"A Small story about Albert Einstein (adopted from Three myths about
scientific peer review, an excellent article by Michael Nielsen about
dark side of peer review)-
Albert Einstein, who wasn’t just an outstanding scientist, but was also
a prolific scientist, publishing more than 300 journal articles between
1901 and 1955. Many of Einstein’s most ground-breaking papers appeared
in his “miracle year” of 1905, when he introduced new ways of
understanding space, time, energy, momentum, light, and the structure of
matter. Not bad for someone unable to secure an academic position, and
working as a patent clerk in the Swiss patent office.

How many of Einstein’s 300 plus papers were peer reviewed? According to
the physicist and historian of science Daniel Kennefick, it may well be
that only a single paper of Einstein’s was ever subject to peer review.
That was a paper about gravitational waves, jointly authored with Nathan
Rosen, and submitted to the journal Physical Review in 1936. The
Physical Review had at that time recently introduced a peer review
system. It wasn’t always used, but when the editor wanted a second
opinion on a submission, he would send it out for review. The
Einstein-Rosen paper was sent out for review, and came back with a
(correct, as it turned out) negative report. Einstein’s indignant reply
to the editor is amusing to modern scientific sensibilities, and
suggests someone quite unfamiliar with peer review:

Dear Sir,

We (Mr. Rosen and I) had sent you our manuscript for publication
and had not authorized you to show it to specialists before it is
printed. I see no reason to address the in any case erroneous comments
of your anonymous expert. On the basis of this incident I prefer to
publish the paper elsewhere.

Respectfully,

P.S. Mr. Rosen, who has left for the Soviet Union, has authorized
me to represent him in this matter."
http://abhishek-tiwari.com/2009/01/e...er-review.html

Yousuf Khan wrote:
Einstein and Peer review | Abhishek Tiwari
"A Small story about Albert Einstein (adopted from Three myths about
scientific peer review, an excellent article by Michael Nielsen about
dark side of peer review)-
Albert Einstein, who wasn’t just an outstanding scientist, but was
also a prolific scientist, publishing more than 300 journal articles
between 1901 and 1955. Many of Einstein’s most ground-breaking papers
appeared in his “miracle year” of 1905, when he introduced new ways of
understanding space, time, energy, momentum, light, and the structure
of matter. Not bad for someone unable to secure an academic position,
and working as a patent clerk in the Swiss patent office.

How many of Einstein’s 300 plus papers were peer reviewed? According
to the physicist and historian of science Daniel Kennefick, it may
well be that only a single paper of Einstein’s was ever subject to
peer review. That was a paper about gravitational waves, jointly
authored with Nathan Rosen, and submitted to the journal Physical
Review in 1936. The Physical Review had at that time recently

So most of Einstein's work was published before journals had a system of
peer review in place? We need to remember that peer review was instituted
partly because the number of submissions was growing beyond the abilities of
the editorial boards to review all the submissions themselves, and that much
of the new subject matter was in areas where the editors often had little
experience and expertise.

The other point about peer review is that it isn't just the first
publication of a paper that counts as a way to judge quality, but its
reception by the scientific community and its influence of other research in
years to come.

Peer review may have a dark side, and it is indeed painful to have one's
paper rejected, but I have in general found reviewers to give helpful and
relevant comments and suggestions for improvement when they were needed. I
have myself rejected a small number of the papers sent my way (I think maybe
two or three out of perhaps 100) on the grounds of unsupportable conclusions
based on the evidence (overinterpretation of noise, usually).

introduced a peer review system. It wasn’t always used, but when the
editor wanted a second opinion on a submission, he would send it out
for review. The Einstein-Rosen paper was sent out for review, and
came back with a (correct, as it turned out) negative report.
Einstein’s indignant reply to the editor is amusing to modern
scientific sensibilities, and suggests someone quite unfamiliar with
peer review:
Dear Sir,

We (Mr. Rosen and I) had sent you our manuscript for publication
and had not authorized you to show it to specialists before it is
printed. I see no reason to address the in any case erroneous comments
of your anonymous expert. On the basis of this incident I prefer to
publish the paper elsewhere.

Respectfully,

P.S. Mr. Rosen, who has left for the Soviet Union, has authorized
me to represent him in this matter."
http://abhishek-tiwari.com/2009/01/e...er-review.html

--
Mike Dworetsky

(Remove pants sp*mbl*ck to reply)

On 12/06/2011 3:57 AM, Mike Dworetsky wrote:
So most of Einstein's work was published before journals had a system of
peer review in place? We need to remember that peer review was
instituted partly because the number of submissions was growing beyond
the abilities of the editorial boards to review all the submissions
themselves, and that much of the new subject matter was in areas where
the editors often had little experience and expertise.

Understood, but the history of peer-review seems to be a recent one, not
as old and established as people often assume. Specifically, a lot of
people seem to think it's one of the steps in the Scientific Method.

The other point about peer review is that it isn't just the first
publication of a paper that counts as a way to judge quality, but its
reception by the scientific community and its influence of other
research in years to come.

Peer review may have a dark side, and it is indeed painful to have one's
paper rejected, but I have in general found reviewers to give helpful
and relevant comments and suggestions for improvement when they were
needed. I have myself rejected a small number of the papers sent my way
(I think maybe two or three out of perhaps 100) on the grounds of
unsupportable conclusions based on the evidence (overinterpretation of
noise, usually).

Or another dark side, is peer-review being replaced by clique-review.
You send your papers over to other people who have similar views as you.

Yousuf Khan

Yousuf Khan wrote:
On 12/06/2011 3:57 AM, Mike Dworetsky wrote:
So most of Einstein's work was published before journals had a
system of peer review in place? We need to remember that peer review
was instituted partly because the number of submissions was growing
beyond the abilities of the editorial boards to review all the
submissions themselves, and that much of the new subject matter was
in areas where the editors often had little experience and expertise.

Understood, but the history of peer-review seems to be a recent one,
not as old and established as people often assume. Specifically, a
lot of people seem to think it's one of the steps in the Scientific
Method.

One of the obvious purposes of peer review is to exclude plainly crackpot
submissions. Another is to screen submissions for errors in method or
analysis. After that, depending on the journal, the submission has to have
a "Wow" factor because far more papers are submitted than can be published.
For example, Nature receives many more perfectly valid papers than they can
possibly publish.

From time to time, a paper gets through that may have method or analysis
errors. Peer-review is not foolproof.


The other point about peer review is that it isn't just the first
publication of a paper that counts as a way to judge quality, but its
reception by the scientific community and its influence of other
research in years to come.

Peer review may have a dark side, and it is indeed painful to have
one's paper rejected, but I have in general found reviewers to give
helpful and relevant comments and suggestions for improvement when
they were needed. I have myself rejected a small number of the
papers sent my way (I think maybe two or three out of perhaps 100)
on the grounds of unsupportable conclusions based on the evidence
(overinterpretation of noise, usually).

Or another dark side, is peer-review being replaced by clique-review.
You send your papers over to other people who have similar views as
you.

One of the purposes of properly done peer review is to avoid exactly that by
having the reviewer chosen by the editor, not by the author!


Yousuf Khan

--
Mike Dworetsky

(Remove pants sp*mbl*ck to reply)

On 12/06/2011 10:45 AM, Mike Dworetsky wrote:
Yousuf Khan wrote:
Or another dark side, is peer-review being replaced by clique-review.
You send your papers over to other people who have similar views as
you.

One of the purposes of properly done peer review is to avoid exactly
that by having the reviewer chosen by the editor, not by the author!

Doesn't guarantee impartiality. The editor could be one of your friends too.

Yousuf Khan