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The win would be a scientific publication that takes science seriously. You can't just go around making assertions of truth and then deny any attempt to discus

The win would be a scientific publication that takes science seriously. You can't just go around making assertions of truth and then deny any attempt to discuss their merits by claiming that it's just a belief or an opinion whose truth value is irrelevant. That's basically how we ended up in this godawful post-truth world we now live in, and there certainly shouldn't be any room for it in a scientific publication.

whatshisface 8y ago
>The win would be a scientific publication that takes science seriously. I agree that there is a winning option for the editors (to do a good job), there just isn't one for Thiel after the editors have done a bad job. I think Thiel purposely set out to fund a "maverick" journal that published things that other people weren't. If you're doing that you can't just pick whoever is the most successful today to edit it - so, you will probably have a few nutters in the system. The no-win situation arises once the nutters get together and make a bad decision. Do you let them make a bad decision, or break the veil of independence? If the financial backers were allowed to decide what is serious science and what isn't, I'm willing to bet that their version of "tobacco cures heart disease" will be the serious science while "leaded gasoline is a public health crisis" will be pushed aside.
- staticautomatic 8y ago
  Enforcing standards of scientific integrity is not censorship insofar as the rejection of a submission is based upon its failure to meet those standards and not because it contains an unpalatable but well-founded assertion. Accordingly, it's not a "lose" for anyone involved in the publication, including Thiel, to support the rejection of junk or pseudo science. When you say "once the nutters get together and make a bad decision," you're treating it as if it was a single thing or collection of things that happened at a single point in time, but that's not the case here. It's an ongoing thing, which naturally raises the prospect of a pattern. Taken together with what appears to be solicitation of submissions from people known to traffic in junk and pseudo science, I think it would be naive to not suspect an agenda on someone's part.
  - whatshisface 8y ago
    What I'm trying to emphasize here is that sure, it can be fixed, but Thiel can't be the one to fix it. Any funding source is going to look bad if they start messing with editorial authority. It's not the funding source that is supposed to be maintaining that.
    - staticautomatic 8y ago
      Perhaps he should stop funding it then.
sonnyblarney 8y ago
"The win would be a scientific publication that takes science seriously." The articles in question are editorials, there are quite a number of them on Inference. So this is not a situation of Journal passing of pseudoscientific research as science i.e. publishing crazy papers. It's really a fuss about some lengthy and interesting bits of logical diatribes that possibly only a few have read in the first place. Thanks to the commenter below, here is the offending article: [1] Have a quick gander. And now you might wonder what all the fuss is about and that the 'real story' seems this might be some tawdry logic by motherjones trying to take a piece out of Thiel? The author of the article seems to be making a genuinely thoughtful case, for god's sake man if this kind of discussion cannot be had the world will end. Most science comes from meandering and most of our meandering is wrong. It doesn't seem to me there is any 'anti science' here really (I don't have enough background in this area to be fully certain), this whole thing could be ridiculous. Nobody is claiming 'flat earth' or pushing crazy propaganda. Frankly, it's enjoyable to read left-field ideas, so long as they are not passed of as 'truth', and I don't think they are in this case, it'll be fine. [1] https://inference-review.com/article/evolution-a-theory-in-crisis-revisited-part-one https://inference-review.com/article/evolution-a-theory-in-c...
- staticautomatic 8y ago
  Actually I don't wonder what all the fuss is about, and for a reason you seem not to have considered. The history of science with a non-scientific agenda is by no means limited to questionable methods and questionable inferences drawn improperly from otherwise "good science." At least as often (if not most of the time), the goal of junk and pseudo science is not actually to assert a truth but to act as if there some reasonable question regarding a thing about which there actually isn't. For example, tobacco companies benefitted from and were primarily interested in perpetuating the idea that there was some genuine debate about whether cigarettes cause lung cancer, in the same way that certain capitalists benefit from the idea that there's a real question about whether burning fossil fuels causes the earth to warm and creationists benefit from a "debate" about whether evolution is real. To say that they're merely asking a question or asserting a point would be disingenuous in light of the historical record. In any event I read the article. It's an interesting history lesson but a number of the author's points suggest to me that he either doesn't totally understand what he's arguing against or is deliberately misrepresenting it. I say that as someone who's done hard science research in the field.

whatshisface 8y ago

>The win would be a scientific publication that takes science seriously. I agree that there is a winning option for the editors (to do a good job), there just isn't one for Thiel after the editors have done a bad job. I think Thiel purposely set out to fund a "maverick" journal that published things that other people weren't. If you're doing that you can't just pick whoever is the most successful today to edit it - so, you will probably have a few nutters in the system. The no-win situation arises once the nutters get together and make a bad decision. Do you let them make a bad decision, or break the veil of independence? If the financial backers were allowed to decide what is serious science and what isn't, I'm willing to bet that their version of "tobacco cures heart disease" will be the serious science while "leaded gasoline is a public health crisis" will be pushed aside.

staticautomatic 8y ago
Enforcing standards of scientific integrity is not censorship insofar as the rejection of a submission is based upon its failure to meet those standards and not because it contains an unpalatable but well-founded assertion. Accordingly, it's not a "lose" for anyone involved in the publication, including Thiel, to support the rejection of junk or pseudo science. When you say "once the nutters get together and make a bad decision," you're treating it as if it was a single thing or collection of things that happened at a single point in time, but that's not the case here. It's an ongoing thing, which naturally raises the prospect of a pattern. Taken together with what appears to be solicitation of submissions from people known to traffic in junk and pseudo science, I think it would be naive to not suspect an agenda on someone's part.
- whatshisface 8y ago
  What I'm trying to emphasize here is that sure, it can be fixed, but Thiel can't be the one to fix it. Any funding source is going to look bad if they start messing with editorial authority. It's not the funding source that is supposed to be maintaining that.
  - staticautomatic 8y ago
    Perhaps he should stop funding it then.

sonnyblarney 8y ago

"The win would be a scientific publication that takes science seriously." The articles in question are editorials, there are quite a number of them on Inference. So this is not a situation of Journal passing of pseudoscientific research as science i.e. publishing crazy papers. It's really a fuss about some lengthy and interesting bits of logical diatribes that possibly only a few have read in the first place. Thanks to the commenter below, here is the offending article: [1] Have a quick gander. And now you might wonder what all the fuss is about and that the 'real story' seems this might be some tawdry logic by motherjones trying to take a piece out of Thiel? The author of the article seems to be making a genuinely thoughtful case, for god's sake man if this kind of discussion cannot be had the world will end. Most science comes from meandering and most of our meandering is wrong. It doesn't seem to me there is any 'anti science' here really (I don't have enough background in this area to be fully certain), this whole thing could be ridiculous. Nobody is claiming 'flat earth' or pushing crazy propaganda. Frankly, it's enjoyable to read left-field ideas, so long as they are not passed of as 'truth', and I don't think they are in this case, it'll be fine. [1] https://inference-review.com/article/evolution-a-theory-in-crisis-revisited-part-one https://inference-review.com/article/evolution-a-theory-in-c...

staticautomatic 8y ago
Actually I don't wonder what all the fuss is about, and for a reason you seem not to have considered. The history of science with a non-scientific agenda is by no means limited to questionable methods and questionable inferences drawn improperly from otherwise "good science." At least as often (if not most of the time), the goal of junk and pseudo science is not actually to assert a truth but to act as if there some reasonable question regarding a thing about which there actually isn't. For example, tobacco companies benefitted from and were primarily interested in perpetuating the idea that there was some genuine debate about whether cigarettes cause lung cancer, in the same way that certain capitalists benefit from the idea that there's a real question about whether burning fossil fuels causes the earth to warm and creationists benefit from a "debate" about whether evolution is real. To say that they're merely asking a question or asserting a point would be disingenuous in light of the historical record. In any event I read the article. It's an interesting history lesson but a number of the author's points suggest to me that he either doesn't totally understand what he's arguing against or is deliberately misrepresenting it. I say that as someone who's done hard science research in the field.