Phil Taylor <nothere DeleteThis @all.invalid> wrote:
> Rowland McDonnell <real-address-in-sig DeleteThis @flur.bltigibbet> wrote:
>
> > I've been getting Time magazine for a few months. It's obviously just a
> > propaganda tool, operating on behalf of I don't know who or what or why
> > - but it just tells you what to think, providing reasonable arguments,
> > and so on. And in every case where I've known something about it, what
> > Time says is utter bollocks.
> >
> > Seems that things haven't changed much since Heinlein got disgusted with
> > it. I have no information about National Geographic in that sense - bu
> > the feeling I've got from it makes me think it's as unreliable as Time.
> > (I don't have a lot of time for Nature, and quite a few other rags of
> > that sort).
>
> Nature and Science are the pre-eminent general scientific journals.
Both those ppublications have lost some of their erstwhile good
reputation in recent years due to dubious editorial practices.
For example, not bothering with proper peer review and saying `Let the
reader decide'' - as a matter of top-=down edotiroal policy in the case
of one of those two, I forget one.
Pre-eminent scientific journal? Bolloicks - merely a trade rag trying
to whip up circulation, if you sak me.
Your claim does not make any sense.
I have no idea what basis you claim that those journals are pre-eminemnt
- I've done scientific research, I've cited papers published in good
scientific journals, and those two have never turned up in any of *MY*
citation lists - because they're not wrehe the cutting edge scienctific
results were published.
That's down to the more specialist publications.
> If
> you reject their contents (at least the peer reviewed papers) then you
> may as well reject the whole of science.
I cannot see any justificatoin for this claim.
We might as well reject that side of scentifiuc publishing, perhaps -
and indeed, there is a debate runnibng inside science at the moment
about what to do with scientific publication, which has been proven to
work very badly and suppress interesting and vital research while
failing to perform proper peer review of what does get published (The
major sins of Science and Naature).
(just you try getting a grant for cosmological research if you don't
sign up to the authorised Big Bang religion, and as for cold fusion...!
It's not science, not the way the `scientific' establishment operates -
it's politics and religion)
> > What publications do I trust? Not many - the Institute of Physics's
> > general magazine `Physics World' is pretty reliable, if only because if
> > someone *does* make a false claim, someone is sure to write in with a
> > correction which will be published.
>
> The same thing applies to any widely-read scientific journal.
But your claim is prvoen wrong because some of the widely-read journals
do *NOT* publish cetain kinds of criticism - and anyway, it's hardly
scientific to fail to do peer review before publication, relying to
outraged readers to correct you: that's a purely commercial decision
made to boost circulation.
One has to lose rsepect for any allegedly scientific publication
operated in that way.
And from what I've been readeing in Physics World (and New Scientist -
although that's barely worth reading at all any more), it's what's been
happening to Nature and Science.
> After
> all, scientists value themselves by their publications,
No they do not: scientists are *evaulatedd* by their publications; it's
a quite different matter.
Because scientists do not value publication except insofar as it gets
them more research money, there's a tendency to fiddle things and
manipulate things and so on.
Scientific publication is in a *MESS* at the moment.
>and the
> opportunity to get a free publication (especially in Nature!) simply by
> supplying a correction is not to be missed.
Quite - and since Nature doesn't bother to do proper peer review any
more, it's all turned into something rather silly, especially in this
world of teh World Wide Webm, which (lest we forget) was designed by
scientific reseachers for the primary purpose of allowing them to
communicate their results more easily to each other without having to go
via conventional print puiblication.
It's all about boosting controversy to boost talk around the subject and
so to boost circulation. It's bullshit, that's what it is.
And don't tell me it's not: I used to work in trade publication.
> To return to the subject of dogs, my old lady is a dog judge, and
> according to her there are 159 breeds recognised by the (UK) Kennel
> Club. Worldwide there are many more breeds, maybe as many as 300. I
> cannot offhand think of any other mammalian species which might compare
> with that for number of races.
I wouldn't expect to be *able* to do a job like that myself (are *you*
an expert biologist with a particular specialism in mammalian species?
Me neither) - expecially since the concept of `race' is generally
considered `total bullshit' by the average modern biologist, or so it
seems from my readering.
> Phil Taylor
>
>
> Whose publication list includes three papers in Nature and two in
> Science.
Which means it's strange that you make the dubious claims above.
Rowland.
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