3 ms·

Yeah, that was more or less my impression. The implication that the reviewers should have caught on because it was a reference to a well-known Seinfeld episode

by elihu 10y ago

Yeah, that was more or less my impression. The implication that the reviewers should have caught on because it was a reference to a well-known Seinfeld episode is particularly silly. Many people who grew up in the United States haven't watched Seinfeld. I definitely would not have gotten the joke, and I certainly wouldn't expect a random journal reviewer (who could be from anywhere) to be intimately familiar with American popular culture, and I wouldn't expect them to google the author's name to figure out if they're the target of a practical joke. Reviewers usually have to assume on some level that those who submit articles aren't lying. They can't verify every claim. Maybe a case could be made that the reviewers in this case didn't do enough due diligence, but just because they didn't get the joke doesn't mean they're doing a bad job.

logicallee 10y ago
yes, thanks. Especially given that he introduces the prevalence as being 2,000 people nationwide. (That is beyond rare. Albinism for example - extremely rare - is 5 people per 100,000 in the United States. 2,000 people in the whole country is 0.62 per 100,000.) So when recording such an incredibly rare disease it would be normal for no one but, for example, the sole specialist in the entire country to have even heard about it. It would be different if he had reported that 2 million people are effected. I don't like the whole thing. It's even worse because the report deserves to be published. As written (though I didn't read beyond the abstract and what he wrote about it), it deserves publication. This isn't like this other hoax, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sokal_affair https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sokal_affair -- "Transgressing the Boundaries: Towards a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity" which on its face does not deserve to be published. I would publish this paper, and more than that, I would argue that papers like this must be published despite not finding anything about it. Integrity is important. Requiring the standard of scholarship to be raised to "integrity isn't enough. If I can't verify the scholarship independently then I would rather shut out exemplary papers than allow frauds through" is not going to benefit science in the long term. Many important researchers did not come with ready-made citations. When Einstein published four groundbreaking works in the Annals of Physics[1] that tore apart the very foundations of space, time, mass, and energy, would someone Googling have found that it almost certainly wasn't a hoax? At some point you just have to believe the papers, and prefer to believe and publish Einstein on the strength of what he's written than to deny him on the strength of a paucity of corroboration. This exercise doesn't help anyone. The paper is just too well-written. [1] see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Annus_Mirabilis_papers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Annus_Mirabilis_papers

by elihu 10y ago

logicallee 10y ago

yes, thanks. Especially given that he introduces the prevalence as being 2,000 people nationwide. (That is beyond rare. Albinism for example - extremely rare - is 5 people per 100,000 in the United States. 2,000 people in the whole country is 0.62 per 100,000.) So when recording such an incredibly rare disease it would be normal for no one but, for example, the sole specialist in the entire country to have even heard about it. It would be different if he had reported that 2 million people are effected. I don't like the whole thing. It's even worse because the report deserves to be published. As written (though I didn't read beyond the abstract and what he wrote about it), it deserves publication. This isn't like this other hoax, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sokal_affair https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sokal_affair -- "Transgressing the Boundaries: Towards a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity" which on its face does not deserve to be published. I would publish this paper, and more than that, I would argue that papers like this must be published despite not finding anything about it. Integrity is important. Requiring the standard of scholarship to be raised to "integrity isn't enough. If I can't verify the scholarship independently then I would rather shut out exemplary papers than allow frauds through" is not going to benefit science in the long term. Many important researchers did not come with ready-made citations. When Einstein published four groundbreaking works in the Annals of Physics[1] that tore apart the very foundations of space, time, mass, and energy, would someone Googling have found that it almost certainly wasn't a hoax? At some point you just have to believe the papers, and prefer to believe and publish Einstein on the strength of what he's written than to deny him on the strength of a paucity of corroboration. This exercise doesn't help anyone. The paper is just too well-written. [1] see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Annus_Mirabilis_papers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Annus_Mirabilis_papers