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Making the paper disappear after having published it, replacing it with a different paper without any explanation at all of what did happen, should also be emba

by kgwgk 8y ago

Making the paper disappear after having published it, replacing it with a different paper without any explanation at all of what did happen, should also be embarrassing for everyone involved.

tptacek 8y ago
It very much is embarrassing to everyone involved; there's no denying that. It's less clear to me that the outcome is bad. Hill's paper really doesn't make sense in NYJM. It's so out of place I think it's actually pretty embarrassing to Hill as well.
- enriquto 8y ago
  I understand that a paper may be published by error. But just removing it without explaining the move to the readers is a shameful lack of respect towards them. If I was on the editorial board of this journal I would resign immediately. It doesn't matter how silly the paper is, the problem is that they are treating their readers as idiots.
  - tptacek 8y ago
    I don't think you're following the controversy here. Publishing it in the first place was the shameful lack of respect, and the editorial board did threaten to resign over it. The right way, apparently, to think about what happened at NYJM is that Hill got one of his friends to sneak an inappropriate article into a journal.
    - kgwgk 8y ago
      > The right way, apparently, to think about what happened at NYJM is that Hill got one of his friends to sneak an inappropriate article into a journal. Who was that friend of his? Rivin, the editor who contacted him after learning about the article from his co-author, Steinberger, the editor-in-chief and founder of the journal who decided to publish the paper, or the unnamed referee who had a very positive opinion?
      - tptacek 8y ago
        The "unnamed referee" is apparently Rivin.
        kgwgk 8y ago
        What makes you think so? If it has been mentioned here or in the linked blog I’ve missed that. Still, if it should be so obvious to any casual observer that the paper doesn’t belong in that journal: how did that escape the journal’s founder and editor-in-chief? (Maybe Rivin was also impersonating Steinberger!)
        tptacek 8y ago
        I don't know, but Steinberger stepped down due to a medical crisis sometime during this drama (it's hard to fix timelines because Hill waited a long time to write this Quillette post). I don't know exactly where I got the impression that Rivin was the person who got this paper fast-tracked, but I think probably somewhere on Joel Fish's Twitter timeline. As I understand it: NYJM is an online-only journal that continually adds papers to each "volume", so it's not like a typical refereed journal where there's a cohort of submissions and a calendar during which the whole peer review committee downselects submissions. You couldn't, for instance, easily fast-track a Usenix paper into a conference proceedings without blowing up the program committee. And, again: you can just look at NYJM and then at this paper and see immediately that it didn't go through peer review. It is unlikely any paper I've found in NYJM for several years back. There are practicing mathematicians on this thread saying the same thing; Tim Gowers also says as much in the blog post we're commenting on.
        kgwgk 8y ago
        > the whole peer review committee What do you mean? Do you expect the whole editorial board to review every paper? I think it’s usual for acceptance to be decided by one editor, based on the report from referees (in the case of the NYJM, one referee). Peer review is provided by the external referee(s), not by the journal editors (but they can also act as reviewers for submissions handled by another editor, I guess it depends on the journal’s policy).
ubernostrum 8y ago
Imagine, for a moment, if Alan Sokal had gotten a like-minded friend who worked at Social Text to fast-track his infamous paper, but by chance someone else did happen to take a look at it and immediately caught on that it was a huge troll and that their processes had been subverted by someone who wanted to score cheap political points by sneaking a paper into their journal. Would you argue that Social Text would, in that situation, still have some sort of duty to publish the paper? Would you argue they'd have a responsibility to give it a prominent, permanent, place in their archives to avoid accusations of having "disappeared" it? Would you argue that they'd need to air that dirty laundry in public? If they did air it all publicly and honestly, would you treat that as a form of bullying of Sokal and his accomplice(s)? Remember: that would be the powerful journal leveling accusations of deliberate fraud against an academic who submitted the paper, and accusations of, at the very least, dishonesty and violation of review processes against one of their own.
- enriquto 8y ago
  > Would you argue that they'd need to air that dirty laundry in public? Yes, airing the problem as publicly as possible would be the right thing to do, out of respect for the readers of the journal. Removing the paper from the publication record is acceptable, as long as it is done very openly, as a kind of "erratum".

by kgwgk 8y ago

Making the paper disappear after having published it, replacing it with a different paper without any explanation at all of what did happen, should also be embarrassing for everyone involved.

tptacek 8y ago

It very much is embarrassing to everyone involved; there's no denying that. It's less clear to me that the outcome is bad. Hill's paper really doesn't make sense in NYJM. It's so out of place I think it's actually pretty embarrassing to Hill as well.

enriquto 8y ago
I understand that a paper may be published by error. But just removing it without explaining the move to the readers is a shameful lack of respect towards them. If I was on the editorial board of this journal I would resign immediately. It doesn't matter how silly the paper is, the problem is that they are treating their readers as idiots.
- tptacek 8y ago
  I don't think you're following the controversy here. Publishing it in the first place was the shameful lack of respect, and the editorial board did threaten to resign over it. The right way, apparently, to think about what happened at NYJM is that Hill got one of his friends to sneak an inappropriate article into a journal.
  - kgwgk 8y ago
    > The right way, apparently, to think about what happened at NYJM is that Hill got one of his friends to sneak an inappropriate article into a journal. Who was that friend of his? Rivin, the editor who contacted him after learning about the article from his co-author, Steinberger, the editor-in-chief and founder of the journal who decided to publish the paper, or the unnamed referee who had a very positive opinion?
    - tptacek 8y ago
      The "unnamed referee" is apparently Rivin.
      - kgwgk 8y ago
        What makes you think so? If it has been mentioned here or in the linked blog I’ve missed that. Still, if it should be so obvious to any casual observer that the paper doesn’t belong in that journal: how did that escape the journal’s founder and editor-in-chief? (Maybe Rivin was also impersonating Steinberger!)
        tptacek 8y ago
        I don't know, but Steinberger stepped down due to a medical crisis sometime during this drama (it's hard to fix timelines because Hill waited a long time to write this Quillette post). I don't know exactly where I got the impression that Rivin was the person who got this paper fast-tracked, but I think probably somewhere on Joel Fish's Twitter timeline. As I understand it: NYJM is an online-only journal that continually adds papers to each "volume", so it's not like a typical refereed journal where there's a cohort of submissions and a calendar during which the whole peer review committee downselects submissions. You couldn't, for instance, easily fast-track a Usenix paper into a conference proceedings without blowing up the program committee. And, again: you can just look at NYJM and then at this paper and see immediately that it didn't go through peer review. It is unlikely any paper I've found in NYJM for several years back. There are practicing mathematicians on this thread saying the same thing; Tim Gowers also says as much in the blog post we're commenting on.
        kgwgk 8y ago
        > the whole peer review committee What do you mean? Do you expect the whole editorial board to review every paper? I think it’s usual for acceptance to be decided by one editor, based on the report from referees (in the case of the NYJM, one referee). Peer review is provided by the external referee(s), not by the journal editors (but they can also act as reviewers for submissions handled by another editor, I guess it depends on the journal’s policy).

ubernostrum 8y ago

Imagine, for a moment, if Alan Sokal had gotten a like-minded friend who worked at Social Text to fast-track his infamous paper, but by chance someone else did happen to take a look at it and immediately caught on that it was a huge troll and that their processes had been subverted by someone who wanted to score cheap political points by sneaking a paper into their journal. Would you argue that Social Text would, in that situation, still have some sort of duty to publish the paper? Would you argue they'd have a responsibility to give it a prominent, permanent, place in their archives to avoid accusations of having "disappeared" it? Would you argue that they'd need to air that dirty laundry in public? If they did air it all publicly and honestly, would you treat that as a form of bullying of Sokal and his accomplice(s)? Remember: that would be the powerful journal leveling accusations of deliberate fraud against an academic who submitted the paper, and accusations of, at the very least, dishonesty and violation of review processes against one of their own.

enriquto 8y ago
> Would you argue that they'd need to air that dirty laundry in public? Yes, airing the problem as publicly as possible would be the right thing to do, out of respect for the readers of the journal. Removing the paper from the publication record is acceptable, as long as it is done very openly, as a kind of "erratum".