It's a journal dedicated to wild speculation about a work of fiction whose author(s) have been dead for thousands of years. Seems like the method they use to choose reviewers is beside the point.

Hot Document:

To clarify my post I quote from another portion of the document discussing the selection of reviewers. "Competent creationists are to be sought. Though not required, each editor may get non-creationist criticism on each paper ... but caution and discernment should be exercised." Thanks for the lively discussion, Bonnie Goldstein

Well, that is separate evidence that this journal is taking a biased approach to referee selection, but you implied in your article that allowing authors to suggest reviewers is an indication of bias and is outside the scope of normal scientific peer review. That implied statement is still in error. If you want to make your point based on the quote above, you should edit your article.

Well, I can imagine that they feel that they are just playing ball - the evolution journals won't accept papers that say "there is no evolution" (they want to know how it happens; they have reason to presume it does) and won't allow anyone but evolutionary biologists to do the reviews - and justly. By this standard, the AIG people are being downright open to even suggest 'non-creationists' as reviewers sometimes.

Now, we wouldn't want an evolution journal to suggest having some creationist reviewers, would we? That would be ... well, a mess.

However, I agree - this AIG journal will complicate things - because now scientists will have to make statements more than just 'peer reviewed' etc - they will actually have to say what journal and provide some evidence that the journal is worthy. There are quite a few questionable journals, let me warn you. Real scientists tend to sort out the mess from the good science - even in the good journals, you have to read the articles quite critically. I learned that as an undergrad, sort of - it took some time in graduate school for me to sort out some entire lines of publication which rested on questionable foundations, and some of that intellectual effort was done by my advisor, otherwise I probably wouldn't have figured out how many papers were actually on quicksand.

Once my eyes were opened to a couple, though, the rest fell in line through some close reading.

Anyway... =/

Ketone:

Hot Document:

To clarify my post I quote from another portion of the document discussing the selection of reviewers. "Competent creationists are to be sought. Though not required, each editor may get non-creationist criticism on each paper ... but caution and discernment should be exercised." Thanks for the lively discussion, Bonnie Goldstein

Well, that is separate evidence that this journal is taking a biased approach to referee selection, but you implied in your article that allowing authors to suggest reviewers is an indication of bias and is outside the scope of normal scientific peer review. That implied statement is still in error. If you want to make your point based on the quote above, you should edit your article.

What I'm saying is that the following chain of events is somewhat journalistically dishonest: 1) an article is written in which Evidence A is given to support Point B, 2) Evidence A is refuted, and then 3) the article is not corrected, but instead Evidence C that supports the same point is posted in an informal discussion forum.

BenK:

I agree - this AIG journal will complicate things - because now scientists will have to make statements more than just 'peer reviewed' etc - they will actually have to say what journal and provide some evidence that the journal is worthy. There are quite a few questionable journals, let me warn you. Real scientists tend to sort out the mess from the good science - even in the good journals, you have to read the articles quite critically.

Well, it's going to be a big pain the next time this silliness gets into a courtroom, because expert witnesses on both sides will have significant lists of publications in peer reviewed journals, and how will one sort out in a courtroom which journal is more reputable? Are they going to pull out citation statistics? Is that even a good measure of the quality of the work?

Amusingly enough, I'd have to say that your statement that the 'creation and flood model' is fringe science really misinterprets what it is... I'd say that even these AIG folks would say that it isn't science at all! They'd say that they can, however, do science within the model that they arrive at via religion.

After all, I can do math presuming that parallel lines cross, or presuming that 1+1 = [the set of all real numbers]. I don't have to claim that my assumption is science.

Similarly, they could say that the 'time has always gone on like it is going on now' [uniformitarianism] model is an untestable assumption, and that most scientists presume it and then build their science within it. And they would be right, to a point. Unfortunately, there really isn't much of a way around presuming that processes occur uniformly in time and space, and still preserve meaningful controls.

Anyway, I agree that I'm a reasonable fellow with lots of credentials. I was just offended that these poor folks were being mocked for following conventional peer review practices (I don't like suggesting reviewers for my papers - I wish they would do away with that noxious practice - but I understand why they do it) and for trying to define the scope of their journal in a way that is honest - though I don't think the journal is likely to be useful to anyone and may just lead to pagefiller being published, as so many journals do.

Unfortunately, self-citation and refutations also count as citations. In fact, a wildly wrong paper can get cited up the whazzoo, as a strawman. You'll basically have to put your cards on the table and say 'X authority cites this paper favorably' and they can say 'Y authority cites this paper favorably' and suddenly it will be clear that some poor school kid is being held up as a test case by a bunch of fierce Pentecostals or ACLU types.

I really respect being a stickler for honesty.

I really don't understand all the times who is responding to what here. Benk, ("the evolution journals won't accept papers that say "there is no evolution" (they want to know how it happens; they have reason to presume it does) and won't allow anyone but evolutionary biologists to do the reviews - and justly. By this standard, the AIG people are being downright open to even suggest 'non-creationists' as reviewers sometimes."), are you drawing a parallel between the fringe position of ID and the well established scientific biologic consensus of Darwinian evolution? I hope not. I suppose you can very well submit a paper critical of evolution if you in fact have something to write about - e.g. a fossil incompatible with evolution, or a good discussion of unsolved problems in evolutionary biology, and what alternate hypothesis there is to explain the problem. But just hypothesizing that there is a creator, that certainly will not cut it.

I found the hot document very interesting, even though the notion of peer review was somewhat flawed/incomplete as the author has admitted (and I should say: kindly admitted). I think it is unrealistic to demand a correction, I have seen corrections (in slate and elsewhere) only for the easiest, most simple factual mistakes .... usually, this kind of mistake stands unacknowledged and uncorrected. Anyway, the document is still hot, even though the text is in part flawed.

traugott:

I really don't understand all the times who is responding to what here.

Hey, traugott. That is a common problem with flat-level discussion forums. To help clarify matters, each Fray thread can be toggled between "Flat" and "Threaded" view. You should see two buttons at the top of the thread with those labels. If you switch from Flat mode (the default) to Threaded mode, you can see a tree-based view of the conversation that makes it more clear which posts are direct responses to which.

Well, my little 'stickler for honesty' statement was meant to praise your post about corrections. I agree, Slate is unlikely to edit their original post, even though it is grossly unfair to the AIG people. I also agree that the AIG instructions to authors is a unique document that could be of interest - and amusing to many people.

As for the boundaries of what other journals will accept - I'm not claiming that they are inappropriate boundaries! Actually, I would be very disturbed if a microbiology journal published a paper claiming that bacteria didn't exist that was somehow reviewed by a bunch of germ skeptics the author had scraped together as appropriate reviewers. It's just not within the scope of what can be properly incorporated into the journal. I was defending the right of the AIG people to draw a line around their own backyard and dictate who are experts in their field. That most of us believe that field to be akin to studying the history of Gotham City with particular attention to the psychology practiced in Arkham Asylum - well... I'll place my bets on the evolutionary biologists giving me better insight in how to handle antibiotic resistance.

Wow, we got all the big mucky-mucks reading this thread! Hope I'm not making too big a fool of myself in front of the Freditor. =P

However, when I paint a really bad picture (often), I do not use my credentials (ie. PhD level scientist) to argue that my work is sublime. When I publish in a peer reviewed journal I do (ok, not sublime but at least a good hypothesis, appropriate experiment, reasonable conclusion, etc). These creationist people are using their scientific background/training (assuming they have any) to try to confer legitimacy to their “scientific work”. Since in their view the bible is 100% accurate, I’m not sure how they would come up with any null hypotheses. Also, things like art, poetry, etc are subjective. To as large a degree as possible science is objective.

I will also add my voice to agree with others who have stated that you can request certain people to be your reviewers (depending on the journal and how technical the article is). Also, you can request certain people not be reviewers. DH and I are “general” reviewers in our specialties for a couple of journals.

I would suggest it depends on the hash and you well know it. If the "hash of it" is based on interpretation of data, or a mis-understanding of "prior art" that's one thing.

If OTOH the "hash" is a fundamental abuse of the overall analytic process, then yes, your work in cell biology absolutely deserves to be scrutinized with extra care, your publications in that area doubly reviewed. And that in turn will make your employer think twice about your competence in the basic skills of science.

Bad Poetry does not provide any insight into your ability to make good judgments in the scientific method. Bad scientific method is far more telling in this area than say the grades you got in grad school or the honors you got on your PhD thesis. And thus they absolutely should be used to disqualify your work.

Its called maintaining integrity. Bad poetry does nothing to impugn your scientific integrity. Bad Science does and should

Your comment about "playing ball" I think is a good metaphor. Science - as you well know - is largely an incremental process. You hypothesize, null hypothesize and prove that this particular protein process works this way. And then you do that for another and another and another. Then you assemble them into a chain of DEDUCTION (as opposed to induction) and make a more general hypothesis which you then prove via the null hypothesis etc. etc.

You suggested that the reason this journal was founded was because general biology journals would not take papers that concluded that evolution did not exist. OK fair enough. But the problem here is that such a paper would really not be writable given the vast amount of evidence that supports evolutionary theory (and lets not list or debate that here).

As Ketone pointed out, the anti-evolutionists could very well take the time to publish papers that undermined the various chains of proof, and in turn then submit papers that brought into question the larger processes. Done often enough succesfully enough, and you would have the journals looking for answers that met the null hypothesis test and provided an answer other than evolution.

But there-in lies the rub. That's a hell of a lot of work. And frankly it isn't really work that can be accomplished given the amount of null hypothesis proofs that exist out there.

So instead of actually attempting to address the failures of evolution, this journal seeks to construct an alternative reality but largely by cherrypicking its results. THAT'S the flaw in thisa approach.

And as pointed out, it is there to create the illusion of a "scientific" controversy - where none actually exists - by providing a "peer reviewed journal" that can be cited in court documents in hopes of getting a favourable or naive judge or jury.