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There is more at play here than just an interesting experiment. The dramatic claims of the paper are not supported by experiments present. They highlight a rea
by searine 4y ago
There is more at play here than just an interesting experiment.
The dramatic claims of the paper are not supported by experiments present. They highlight a real pattern, but that is far from proving SC2 being of synthetic origin. A better approach would have been waiting for peer review, probably getting dinged on speculative conclusions, softening the language and then publishing in a peer reviewed journal
Instead they juked the review and posted on a pre-print with speculative language intact. There is no time pressure, they could have waited a few months to have outside eyes on it. I think they knew their conclusion was a reach and wanted to get it out there anyway for the twitter clout.
Having contrarians in science is helpful because they will always tilt at windmills, and sometimes succeed, but usually not. But that's why review is so important. It should have been reviewed by three experts before publishing. Instead they chose to have peer-review be public, by thousands of people, many of whom are not experts. They made their bed.
- xyzzy123 4y agoThere is zero chance this would have been accepted for publication in any serious journal. Alina Chan's paper got stuck in review for nearly 2 years. I think the authors were smart to solicit feedback in public, even if it's messy. It at least forced some engagement.
- baja_blast 4y agoHow do you feel about the market origins preprint that claimed to have "dispositive evidence" of market origin based off of cherry picked data and a photo from 2014 reported in every major outlet?
- searine 4y agoPre-prints should be avoided for any study that has a political bent (even if the authors don't intend it to). Pre-prints are fine for 99% of papers, because even if they are controversial they don't have a lot of reach. It is just a way for scientists to stake claims while undergoing review, which can take awhile. For papers like these, traditional review is important because it can temper a lot of the more biased or political statements in the paper or help remove some of the more sketchy results/conclusions. It is far far from perfect, but it is better than nothing. As I said above. The time pressure for covid is over. There is no reason to not undergo peer-review first for papers like these.