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I think it's important to note that this paper has not yet been peer reviewed, so this is nothing more than an attention-grabbing title from Nature.

samatman 13y ago
Actually the title is both accurate and roughly as big as it looks. Stephen Hawking is, in fact, saying that there are no black holes: no event horizon, no black hole. The fact that this statement has yet to pass peer review and enter publication is interesting but does not detract from the accuracy nor news interest of the article and title.
throwaway_yy2Di 13y ago
The arXiv paper indicates he has no intention of submitting it to a peer-reviewed journal -- something that's becoming pretty common in some physics fields. On the contrary, I see the "yet to pass peer review" remark as a crass editorialization from the Nature journalists¹. This paper has already seen more, meaningful, peer review that most papers Nature publishes; informal review from people downloading the (free, open) paper from the arXiv, or listening to the talk at the Kavli conference. The institute Nature is defending is becoming an irrelevant middleman: what's the point of reviewers, if they barely read the papers, and then hide them behind paywalls from anyone who actually wants to read them, when there's whole social network of researchers who will read papers enthusiastically, for free, and share what they think of them? http://arxiv.org/abs/1401.5761 http://arxiv.org/abs/1401.5761 ¹ You should question to what extent they're journalists, when their employer is a for-profit entity existentially threatened by the subject they're reporting on.
- frozenport 13y ago
  Having submitted to a nature journal, the peer review process took several months with new experiments and new theory being requested. You are wrong to say that the paper went through blindly.
- weichi 13y ago
  "This paper has already seen more, meaningful, peer review that most papers Nature publishes ..." I really don't think that this is true. The useful bit of peer review is changes made to the original paper as part of the peer review process (both for accuracy and clarity of exposition). No feedback from arXiv readers has yet been incorporated into this paper; perhaps in a few months there will be an updated version that includes such feedback. Until then, people will have to search the net to get a feeling for how the wider field views his ideas. In terms of feedback from conferences, plenty of results are presented at conferences prior to publication in Nature and other journals, so I doubt there is any difference in the review level here.
adaml_623 13y ago
This is actually a link to, and summary of, a paper by a world famous physicist writing about an interesting topic. I imagine it has actually been reviewed by some of Hawking's peers before he published to the internet. I know that's not the generally accepted usage of the phrase peer review but I think it is probably becoming more normal practice.

samatman 13y ago

Actually the title is both accurate and roughly as big as it looks. Stephen Hawking is, in fact, saying that there are no black holes: no event horizon, no black hole. The fact that this statement has yet to pass peer review and enter publication is interesting but does not detract from the accuracy nor news interest of the article and title.

throwaway_yy2Di 13y ago

The arXiv paper indicates he has no intention of submitting it to a peer-reviewed journal -- something that's becoming pretty common in some physics fields. On the contrary, I see the "yet to pass peer review" remark as a crass editorialization from the Nature journalists¹. This paper has already seen more, meaningful, peer review that most papers Nature publishes; informal review from people downloading the (free, open) paper from the arXiv, or listening to the talk at the Kavli conference. The institute Nature is defending is becoming an irrelevant middleman: what's the point of reviewers, if they barely read the papers, and then hide them behind paywalls from anyone who actually wants to read them, when there's whole social network of researchers who will read papers enthusiastically, for free, and share what they think of them? http://arxiv.org/abs/1401.5761 http://arxiv.org/abs/1401.5761 ¹ You should question to what extent they're journalists, when their employer is a for-profit entity existentially threatened by the subject they're reporting on.

frozenport 13y ago
Having submitted to a nature journal, the peer review process took several months with new experiments and new theory being requested. You are wrong to say that the paper went through blindly.
weichi 13y ago
"This paper has already seen more, meaningful, peer review that most papers Nature publishes ..." I really don't think that this is true. The useful bit of peer review is changes made to the original paper as part of the peer review process (both for accuracy and clarity of exposition). No feedback from arXiv readers has yet been incorporated into this paper; perhaps in a few months there will be an updated version that includes such feedback. Until then, people will have to search the net to get a feeling for how the wider field views his ideas. In terms of feedback from conferences, plenty of results are presented at conferences prior to publication in Nature and other journals, so I doubt there is any difference in the review level here.

adaml_623 13y ago

This is actually a link to, and summary of, a paper by a world famous physicist writing about an interesting topic. I imagine it has actually been reviewed by some of Hawking's peers before he published to the internet. I know that's not the generally accepted usage of the phrase peer review but I think it is probably becoming more normal practice.