On Post- or Pre-Pub Peer Review

Greg Neyman
Cited by CMI

‘Peer-review is critical for scientific research to be taken seriously … Basically, several other scientists who are experts in the field examine your work to see if it contains errors. Occasionally you will see young earth claims of their work being peer-reviewed. … However, for young earth work to be taken seriously, it must pass the muster of peer-review from non young-earth scientists … Normally, a peer-reviewed article which passes muster would be published in a leading journal such as from the Geological Society of America, [not just] on the ICR website. If the RATE [Radio isotopes and the Age of The Earth] project truly publishes some work which is good enough for publication in secular journals, then they would surely pursue that route. It is clear in this case that the “peers” for these articles are other young-earth proponents, which cast serious doubts upon the validity of the works.’

CMI answers

Apart from the glaring inconsistencies in this line of argument (if young-earth research should only be taken seriously if it passes the peer-review of non young-earth scientists, then shouldn’t old-earth research only be taken seriously if it passes the peer-review of young-earth scientists? Are the ‘peers’ of old-earth scientists not also proponents of an old earth? Would this not cast serious doubt on the validity of their research?), it reveals an astonishing ignorance and naivety of how science and the peer-review process is actually conducted.

Creationism, Science and Peer Review
Published: 2 February 2008 (GMT+10)
http://creation.com/creationism-science-and-peer-review

There is another point. There is a difference between pre-publishing and post-publishing review. Greg Neyman is presumably speeking of pre-publishing. But if old earth believers were not given opportunity from stopping a publication of a young earth paper, who is stopping them from doing post-publish ing reviews, as acid as they like?

Perhaps they are themselves.

Purported reason "it hasn't passed pre-publishing peer review, so it's not playing by the rules of 'science' (Registered Trademark)".

That seems a bit lame. How if the real reason was something perfectly rational like "if we do a post-publishing review, like CMI or sometimes even Hans Georg Lundahl does of us, we direct attention to what we are reviewing and our readers can compare our review to what we are reviewing, and they might even - God forbid, even if he doesn't exist! / God forbid, if there is one! / God forbid!" (insert correct alternative according to personal "faith" of each person so arguing behind closed doors) - "come to the conclusion that we are wrong!"

Meanwhile, thanks to this old article by Greg Neyman (in note as Neyman, G., Creation Science Rebuttals, Institute for Creation Research, RATE Project Turns to Deception, 9 October 2004, answersincreation.org ), being linked to by and old article by CMI (as cited) which was linked to by an article of today, I have something to practise my talents (or otherwise) as post publishing reviewer on.

And if my post pub review is considered not scientific (see "Science" Registered Trademark) because raised by one who is not a Scientist as in having published papers that were pre-publication peer reviewed, it is still debate. And that went on as early as the Greeks, well before registered trademarks, well before this new idea of pre-publication peer review.

Now, the article by Neyman linked to wiki about "peer review". Good and bad choice. Bad for his purposes of giving a reference meant to always clearly justify peer review (it probably looked different back in 2004, I have done reediting on wiki myself and also saved the versions of my own editorial process on blogs so they remain after someone else changes the articles, which was done. But good, because the link actually gives me a division of how and when it started to be done in diverse fields. Peer reviews among physicians for their practise (good practise or malpractise) comes from Arabic physicians. Scholarly pre-publishing peer review is considerably later. Now, let us look at the article and one it links to in passages relevant for scholarly peer review. I will of course cite articles as they are now, and do not intend to change this post just because wiki articles change.

Peer review
a linea: Scholarly

Scholarly peer review (also known as refereeing) is the process of subjecting an author's scholarly work, research, or ideas to the scrutiny of others who are experts in the same field, before a paper describing this work is published in a journal or as a book. The peer review helps the publisher (that is, the editor-in-chief or the editorial board) decide whether the work should be accepted, considered acceptable with revisions, or rejected. Peer review requires a community of experts in a given (and often narrowly defined) field, who are qualified and able to perform reasonably impartial review. Impartial review, especially of work in less narrowly defined or inter-disciplinary fields, may be difficult to accomplish, and the significance (good or bad) of an idea may never be widely appreciated among its contemporaries. Peer review is generally considered necessary to academic quality and is used in most major scientific journals, but does by no means prevent publication of all invalid research. Traditionally, peer reviewers have been anonymous, but there is currently a significant amount of open peer review, where the comments are visible to readers, generally with the identities of the peer reviewers disclosed as well.

Scholarly peer review
a linea : History

The first record of an editorial pre-publication peer-review is from 1665 by Henry Oldenburg, the founding editor of Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society at the Royal Society of London.[1][2][3]

The first peer-reviewed publication might have been the Medical Essays and Observations published by the Royal Society of Edinburgh in 1731. The present-day peer-review system evolved from this 18th-century process,[4] began to involve external reviewers in the mid-19th-century,[5] and did not become commonplace until the mid-20th-century.[6]

Peer review became a touchstone of the scientific method, but until the end of the 19th century only an editor-in-chief or editorial committees performed it.[7]

Editors of scientific journals made publication decisions without seeking outside input, i.e. an external panel of reviewers, giving established authors latitude in their journalistic discretion. For example, Albert Einstein's four revolutionary Annus Mirabilis papers in the 1905 issue of Annalen der Physik were peer-reviewed by the journal's editor-in-chief, Max Planck, and its co-editor, Wilhelm Wien, both future Nobel prize winners and together experts on the topics of these papers. On another occasion, Einstein was severely critical of the external review process, saying that he had not authorized the editor in chief to show his manuscript "to specialists before it is printed", and informing him that he would "publish the paper elsewhere".[8] While some medical journals started to systematically appoint external reviewers, it is only since the middle of the 20th century that this practice has spread widely and that external reviewers have been given some visibility within academic journals, including being thanked by authors and editors.[7] A 2003 editorial in Nature stated that "in journals in those[which?] days, the burden of proof was generally on the opponents rather than the proponents of new ideas.".[9] The journal Nature itself instituted formal peer review only in 1967.[10]

Notes, with my comments:

1

Rena Steinzor (July 24, 2006). "Rescuing Science from Politics". google.com. Cambridge University Press. p. 304. ISBN 0521855209.

Rena Steinzor is a Professor at the University of Maryland School of Law.

Professor Steinzor teaches administrative law, food safety law, and advanced courses on the regulatory system, as well as legal analysis and writing/contracts. She has written in the areas of (1) criminal culpability for recklessness that threatens public health, worker and consumer safety, and the environment; (2) regulatory dysfunction in agencies assigned to protect public health, worker and consumer safety, and the environment; (3) the role of centralized White House review on the protectiveness of regulation; (4) environmental federalism, including so-called "unfunded mandates" imposed on state and local governments by the federal government; (5) the implications of industry self-regulation on the protection of the environment and human health; (6) "market-based" alternatives to traditional regulation; and (7) political interference with regulatory science.

She also writes on HuffPost.

Obviously, she is as such a credible source for saying earliest pre-publishing peer review (outside Catholic theology, which has reviews by superiors, cfr nihil obstat and imprimatur, NB) is one conducted by Henry Oldenburg in the year before the fire or plague or whatever it was in London.

2

Committee on Science, Engineering, and Public Policy, National Academy of Sciences, National Academy of Engineering, and Institute of Medicine On Being a Scientist: A Guide to Responsible Conduct in Research National Academies Press, Washington, D.C., 1995,82 pages, ISBN 0309119707

This committee sounds very firmly anchored in technical research, where safety measures in engineering and correct treatments in medicine are concerned. Typical that they should be writing on peer reviews, it has some bearing on the earlier practise of clinical peer review of practitioners. Not really what I consider a prime necessity for investigations conducted for the sake of our curiosity.

Nevertheless, they are as such credible in saying that earliest pre-publishing peer review (outside Catholic theology, which has reviews by superiors, cfr nihil obstat and imprimatur, NB) is one conducted by Henry Oldenburg in the year before the fire or plague or whatever it was in London.

However, since it is 29 pages long, I haven't found the reference yet, if the link was even to the right reference. The book was supposed to be 82 pages, after all!

3

The Origin of the Scientific Journal and the Process of Peer Review House of Commons Select Committee Report

This one is Annex 1 to some Select Committee report. I'll cite you the text, it is (probably unlike the report as a whole) short:

THE ORIGIN OF THE SCIENTIFIC JOURNAL AND THE PROCESS OF PEER REVIEW

Learned publishing by means of the journal first began in the mid 17th century. Henry Oldenburg created the world's first scientific journal for the newly founded Royal Society of London (of whom he was first Joint Secretary) in March 1665 to solve a number of problems faced by early scientists. Principal among these was the desire to establish precedence: the first authors of a phenomenon or result wanted their priority as discoverer to be publicly acknowledged and secured before they were prepared to share their results with their colleagues. Oldenburg realised that an independent periodical publication run by an independent third-party that would faithfully record the name of a discoverer, the date the paper was submitted and a description of the discovery could resolve this dilemma for the pioneering scientists of his age. Philosophical Transactions, the journal Oldenburg set up for members of the Royal Society (but at his own financial risk and profit) did exactly this. In its monthly issues, it registered the name of the authors and date that they sent their manuscripts to Oldenburg as well as recording their discoveries, thereby securing the priority for first authors and encouraging them to share their results with others, safe in the knowledge that their "rights" as "first discoverers" were protected by so doing. Philosophical Transactions from its outset did not publish all the material it received; the Council of the Society reviewed the contributions Oldenburg received before approving a selection of them for publication. Albeit primitive, this is the first recorded instance of "peer review". It was quickly realised by Oldenburg's contemporaries that the accumulating monthly issues of the journal also represented a record of the transactions of science of archival value.

The four functions of Oldenburg's journal: registration, dissemination, peer review and archival record are so fundamental to the way scientists behave and how science is carried out that all subsequent journals, even those published electronically in the 21st century, have conformed to Oldenburg's model. All modern journals carry out the same functions as Oldenburg's and all journal publishers are Oldenburg's heirs.

The journal article performs a unique role in scholarship. It is an on-the-record, validated public statement of the claims made by its authors, like a witness statement under oath in the court of scientific opinion. It occupies a central position in terms of the wider set of possible communication modes that a researcher may adopt (oral presentations at conferences, early draft versions of a paper (preprints), an evaluated review article of other research articles in a field, a scholarly monograph or textbook). It is the evaluated (that is, peer reviewed) public, formal and final nature of the published journal article that make it so important to its authors, their individual standing and their career prospects.

Commenting on that:

This paragraph is - as we could see on the wiki above - incorrect:

The four functions of Oldenburg's journal: registration, dissemination, peer review and archival record are so fundamental to the way scientists behave and how science is carried out that all subsequent journals, even those published electronically in the 21st century, have conformed to Oldenburg's model. All modern journals carry out the same functions as Oldenburg's and all journal publishers are Oldenburg's heirs.

At least if by peer review is meant pre-publishing and by a committee independent of the publisher.

If however we include post-publication review by accepting answers and if we include editor's own personal pre-publishing review, it is correct, more or less, though ALL is a very daring word.

Nevertheless, this committee may well be credible in saying that earliest pre-publishing peer review (outside Catholic theology, which has reviews by superiors, cfr nihil obstat and imprimatur, NB) is one conducted by Henry Oldenburg in the year before the fire or plague or whatever it was in London.

Now, the question is, which of the sources has copied which, since all of them omitted the culturally rather easily comprehensible fact that Catholic Church had started the process by the Nihil Obstat, Imprimi Potest and Imprimatur reviews ordered on any books bearing on theology by Council of Trent one century or so earlier than Oldenburg.

4

Benos, Dale J.; et al. (2007). "The Ups and Downs of Peer Review". Advances in Physiology Education. 31 (2): 145–152. doi:10.1152/advan.00104.2006. PMID 17562902. "p. 145 – Scientific peer review has been defined as the evaluation of research findings for competence, significance, and originality by qualified experts. These peers act as sentinels on the road of scientific discovery and publication."

Two remarks. It is a medical or close to medical publication. Not one concerned with matters of human curiosity as such, without pragmatic urgencies, like Creation / Evolution debate. Even so its very title admits there are ups and downs in the question of applying peer review.

Obviously, someone looking at my debates from the medical standpoint, as I were trying to qualify as a physician, would be missing the whole point of there being matters which are of free debate and of my not claiming to be either a physician nor otherwise a scientist. Medical accountability may be a very excellent thing, but misapplying it to a debater is a mistake which a medical man could be making by suffering from both Asperger and cultural blindness and being blind to the fact that all fields are not medicine, all criticisms (including this one) of physicians OR other experts are not made with claims of possessing medical expertise.

He is of course very welcome to telling us "The first peer-reviewed publication might have been the Medical Essays and Observations published by the Royal Society of Edinburgh in 1731. The present-day peer-review system evolved from this 18th-century process,[4]."

5

Blow, Nathan S. (January 2015). "Benefits and Burdens of Peer-Review". BioTechniques (editorial). 58 (1). p. 5. doi:10.2144/000114242.

In so far as this is an editorial, this expresses the OPINION of the editor in chief Nathan S. Blow. In so far as Biotechniques are medical concerns, his is, like Beno's a typical med school point of view. But he is very welcome to tell us that this peer review, starting systematically in another medical paper than his (and thereby contradicting the annex 1 on all subsequent publications being heirs to Oldenburg) "began to involve external reviewers in the mid-19th-century,[5]" (even further away from Oldenburg).

6

Same source.

And he is very welcome to tell us "The present-day peer-review system evolved from this 18th-century process,[4] began to involve external reviewers in the mid-19th-century,[5] and did not become commonplace until the mid-20th-century.[6]".

So sth which was not even commonplace until the mid 20th century is supposed to be somehow an authority for the behaviour of an assumed reactionary, like myself? It's like telling Franco and Salazar they are wrong about condoms in schools, because Olof Palme endorses them, and Olof Palme is just SO progressive back in the last years of that Spanish and of that Portuguese statesman and first years of the Swedish prime minister!

Some of us just don't want to comply with progressive!

7

Pontille, David; Torny, Didier (2014). "From Manuscript Evaluation to Article Valuation: The Changing Technologies of Journal Peer Review". Human Studies. 38: 57. doi:10.1007/s10746-014-9335-z.

First link (placed here instead) actually goes to an index. No, actually not. It first went to a page which went Document non accessible ! and then redirected to the index:HAL, where Derniers dépôts says on top, also these two authors, also on subject of peer review:

David Pontille, Didier Torny. The Blind Shall See! The Question of Anonymity in Journal Peer Review.. Ada: A Journal of Gender, New Media, and Technology, 2014, http://adanewmedia.org/2014/04/issue4-pontilletorny/. <10.7264/N3542KVW>.

And here is second link: From Manuscript Evaluation to Article Valuation: The Changing Technologies of Journal Peer Review
[redirecting to]
http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs10746-014-9335-z

According to the abstract, it gives a somewhat long history of peer reviews. Instead of quoting again the wiki articled annotated to here, I'll quote opening words:

Born in the 17th century, journal peer review is an extremely diverse technology, constantly torn between two often incompatible goals: the validation of manuscripts conceived as a collective industrial-like reproducible process performed to assert scientific statements, and the dissemination of articles considered as a means to spur scientific discussion, raising controversies, and civically challenging a state of knowledge.

You may take it, if I am not into pre-publishing peer review, it is because my priorities are with the latter goal.

8

Kennefick, Daniel (September 2005). "Einstein Versus the Physical Review". Physics Today. 58 (9): 43–48. Bibcode:2005PhT....58i..43K. doi:10.1063/1.2117822.

The latter had an abstract ... no, a whole article, from which I cite this:

Einstein stopped submitting work to the Physical Review after receiving a negative critique from the journal in response to a paper he had written with Rosen on gravitational waves later in 1936.2 That much has long been known, at least to the editors of Einstein’s collected papers. But the story of Einstein’s subsequent interaction with the referee in that case is not well known to physicists outside of the gravitational-wave community. Last March, the journal’s current editor-in-chief, Martin Blume, and his colleagues uncovered the journal’s logbook records from the era, a find that has confirmed the suspicions about that referee’s identity.3 Moreover, the story raises the possibility that Einstein’s gravitational-wave paper with Rosen may have been his only genuine encounter with anonymous peer review. Einstein, who reacted angrily to the referee report, would have been well advised to pay more attention to its criticisms, which proved to be valid.

If you think Einstein is the nec plus ultra genius and admire peer review, this may give you some headache. Me not so.

I wonder if Einstein was wrong and I am - as you may have gathered from above - not a fan of pre publication peer review, especially of course when used as excuse for refusing to deal with Creationist arguments.

9

"Coping with peer rejection". Nature. 425 (6959): 645. October 16, 2003. Bibcode:2003Natur.425..645.. doi:10.1038/425645a. PMID 14562060.

http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2003Natur.425..645.

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v425/n6959/full/425645a.html

An editorial means we are dealing with opinion.

As it seems, I am not right now at least finding the sentence from which note nine came down to reference in that editorial.

BUT I find a little clue why Creationists are not in the habit of sending material to Nature for pre publication peer review.

Other examples, for instance in mammalian evolution and muscle crossbridge dynamics, were published with editors and referees suspecting that their conclusions were probably wrong but giving the papers the benefit of the doubt because there were no insurmountable technical objections and they seemed important. Such cases have proved stimulating for their fields, even though (in at least one case) the conclusions, as techniques have improved, have indeed required revision.

Mammalian evolution? Oh dear! Btw, here is the paragraph shortened to the words before note nine above:

This is strikingly reminiscent of perhaps the most celebrated editorial judgements of all, in Annalen der Physik in1905. That was the year in which Einstein published five extraordinary papers in that journal, including special relativity and the photoelectric effect. The journal had a great editor in Max Planck. He recognized the virtue of publishing such outlandish ideas, but there was also a policy that allowed authors much latitude after their first publication. Indeed, in journals in those days, the burden of proof was generally on the opponents rather than the proponents of new ideas. ...

Breaking off here. For the process of PRE publication review, it should be. Publishing a paper does not mean accepting it is true. It is POST publication that the critics should be taking the burden of proof to the proponents of whatever is not obvious. Which in its turn is something somewhat other than "whatever is new".

One might also remember just how exceptional Nobel-winning discoveries tend to be.

Actually, the initial provocation for this editorial was the news story of how a man had NOT got the Nobel prize with a few others, because his version of a discovery was turned down by pre-pub review. We get it, grants and Nobel prices matter, but don't change the procedure, because Noble prices are rare and grants are not the publication's business anyway.

By and large, peer-filtering has strong virtues.

Which ones, the editor does not quite inform us. Perhaps like keeping Creationism out?

10

"History of the journal Nature: Timeline". Macmillan Publishers Limited. 2013. Retrieved 12 November 2013.

Oh, 1962, Cold War and Censorship. 1967, A Formal Peer Review System. Could there be some connection?

Hans Georg Lundahl
Nanterre UL
Motherhood of the Blessed Virgin Mary
11.X.2016

PS, I might one day go on to take the rest of Neyman's article, but his link to wiki was really worth gold!

Here are three saved versions of my own wiki editing, in French:

• 1) En français sur Antimodernism : Parallaxe
• 2) Géocentrisme, ma vers. 1
• 3) Géocentrisme, ma vers. 2

For the moment, clicking will introduce a commercial break with a link not found. Will try to verify problem ... and that blog is the one that does so. Had one hunch, not the correct one. Beyond me to fix, and due to some sabotage. At least happens in this library, not sure about where you access./HGL