"Dinosaurs" and Global Warming

A few days ago, I mentioned (here) a proposal in a New York Times article to change academic peer review. As was to be expected, the article quoted from “dinosaurs” who didn’t want it changed. Now there is also a letter to the editor (here) by another dinosaur chanting the same nonsense, because he believes that articles that don’t get published can always be published in newly-established journals:

“...outlets for alternative views frequently occur by means of the founding of new journals. Take, for example, women’s studies. This is now an unquestioned discipline, which it was not 25 years ago. An important reason that it was able to establish itself was the appearance of new journals with the same peer review system that had previously served to exclude alternative viewpoints.”

The person saying this, Christopher Soufas (a professor of Spanish and Portuguese at Temple University), perhaps doesn’t realize what he is admitting. Although he defends the current system of peer review, he also admits that this system can “exclude alternative viewpoints.” This is exactly what we skeptics of global warming have been saying. When the true believers say that their results are backed by peer review, we aren’t impressed because we think the process is far from perfect and can easily be gamed so as to produce what seems to be a consensus.

Would the defenders of peer review approve of new journals which are devoted to skepticism about global warming? I suspect not. (And don’t say that such journals wouldn’t be using peer review properly if they rejected articles that were not skeptical, because the same criticism can be applied to women’s studies journals.)

Soufas has some other things to say about peer review. He says, “Most academic journals allow rejected authors to resubmit their scholarship, provided they take into account the reviewer’s objections.” I don’t know of any journal that does this, unless they specifically invite the author to resubmit. And the one time I received such an invitation, the reviewer warned me that there was no guarantee that he or she would be the reviewer the next time. Since reviewers differ greatly in what they criticize, I thought it would be a waste of time to resubmit.

Then again, the editor may change by the time one has rewritten one’s article, and that new editor may not feel bound by vague promises made by the previous editor, so the whole thing can be a big waste of time. Or the reviewer, even if it is the same person, may not find the changes satisfactory.

The strangest story of resubmission I heard was that of a scholar who was asked to make changes, which he did, only to find that the journal published his original version anyway. What was the point of making all those changes?

Finally, Soufas makes the following claim:

“I have found that there is a rough justice in academic publishing. If at first you don’t succeed, try again. Good scholarship will find an outlet.”

This is the sort of thing that people at the top often say to justify the system. (They never want to listen to those of us at the bottom, even if they are leftists who say they want to listen to people at the bottom.) Another person at the top gave me a different view. He admitted that it was all a crap shoot. Plus he said his wife, a historian, kept submitting the same article again and again, and it kept getting rejected. What was frustrating was that she was convinced it was being rejected by the same person. Is that justice? No. Since she wasn’t able to publish it, does that mean it wasn’t good scholarship? No. People who say that good scholarship will find an outlet are not, as far as I know, pointing to some study that proves this. They are just engaged in wishful thinking.

In a day or two, I’ll offer a challenge to those who believe this. Meanwhile, there’s this frustrating experience by a physicist to consider.


Hat tip: Keith Burgess-Jackson

Comments

[Alrenous]

That physicist's account was very very funny. Nobody with experience with the system could possibly believe it has the virtues we're told it has.

I don't actually have experience with it, so it's good to know it's exactly what I expected it would be.

His explanation is wrong, though. The 'debunkers' were high status, and can discredit whoever they like, and were obviously involved personally with the journal, or were perhaps even reviewer #2. This was simply a case of not letting the plebes get impertinent, with the complication of hoping for plausible deniability.

[John Pepple]

"... or were perhaps even reviewer #2."

I think there's a lot of that, actually. I had reviewers recommend things, and I suspected that they were recommending their own things. In one case, the reviewer made it seem as if a work by X would be the next big thing. It wasn't.