Re: Hoax Article Accepted by OA Bentham Journal

[Stevan Harnad <harnad@ecs.soton.ac.uk>]

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 exposee 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 exposees are not only prominent cases like the 0 
Bogdanov Balderdash, the El Naschie Nonsense, and of course the 
recent Pharmomercial scams. The price of reliable quality is 
constant vigilance.

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