tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9633767.post5683944007262361903..comments2024-03-18T06:11:04.848-07:00Comments on The Curious Wavefunction: The anatomy of peer review: Why airing dirty laundry in public is importantWavefunctionhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14993805391653267639noreply@blogger.comBlogger27125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9633767.post-9516101368258490792013-01-30T19:32:35.710-08:002013-01-30T19:32:35.710-08:00Very interesting discussion! You might find this o...Very interesting discussion! You might find this one inspiring as well: http://www.davidrasnick.com/Home_files/2012,%20Steinhauser%20et%20multi,%20Anti-MeHy%20censorship%20-%20Elsevier.pdfAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9633767.post-44178200341535522122012-06-03T18:20:07.675-07:002012-06-03T18:20:07.675-07:00EMBO Journal now publishes the editorial communica...EMBO Journal now publishes the editorial communications that precede many of its publications.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9633767.post-11384230858801240932012-05-20T20:03:28.666-07:002012-05-20T20:03:28.666-07:00Although Menger like to police others, when he was...Although Menger like to police others, when he was pointed out by Christl, he refused to retract his erroneous paper. I agree his great service to science and big fan of science his opening lines in any paper specifically.<br /><br />http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/anie.200704704/abstract<br /><br /><br />the last paragraph in the above comments reads<br />"<br />Chemistry as a science does not<br />suffer damage by errors, since if they<br />concern an important field of research<br />these are recognized as such sooner or<br />later, and if they occur in research<br />niches they are without significance.<br />For the reader of scientific work, how-<br />ever, it will become increasingly more<br />difficult to separate the wheat from the<br />chaff, if authors and referees do not do<br />the preliminary sorting adequately.<br />"Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9633767.post-5811619432599198712012-05-09T09:43:26.263-07:002012-05-09T09:43:26.263-07:00Found it.
http://pubs.acs.org/doi/pdf/10.1021/jo0...Found it. <br />http://pubs.acs.org/doi/pdf/10.1021/jo00024a053<br /><br />good memory man.<br />-InfMPAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9633767.post-84965968518906700362012-05-08T06:55:27.974-07:002012-05-08T06:55:27.974-07:00OK, you have been faster tham me (Anon 6:54)... ;-...OK, you have been faster tham me (Anon 6:54)... ;-)Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9633767.post-49566352707975178812012-05-08T06:54:12.699-07:002012-05-08T06:54:12.699-07:00Why do you think that referees reports should be c...Why do you think that referees reports should be confidential? Should not a referee stand behind what he/she has written? Sometimes referees say truly ridiculous things, and if a paper is rejected you don't even really have the chance to discuss with the referees about their criticism. Once it happened to me that a referee did not even accept textbook knowledge - and based on his review, the paper has been rejected (it was a higher standing journal of the ACS).<br /><br />I like the philosophy of journals like PLoS ONE: "Although reviewers may remain anonymous during the review process, we strongly urge them to relinquish this anonymity to promote open and transparent decision-making."Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9633767.post-49496007913235827082012-05-08T06:25:47.179-07:002012-05-08T06:25:47.179-07:00Anon 7:17: And that's an important point. In t...Anon 7:17: And that's an important point. In today's era of open science, some are suggesting that referees' comments (even if not their identity) should be made public so that the reviewing process becomes as transparent as possible. Perhaps if their comments are publicly available, reviewers will make a more honest attempt to reject manuscripts based on substance rather than bias or simple disagreements.Wavefunctionhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14993805391653267639noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9633767.post-35560484619634859962012-05-07T19:17:00.406-07:002012-05-07T19:17:00.406-07:00Haim's quotation from a referee's report i...Haim's quotation from a referee's report is unethical. Referees write reports in confidence to the editors of a journal and are not public documents. How can the accuracy of the citation be checked and will referees do their job if their reports are reported? In the Haim case, there is a clear misuse as the sentences are not in any context. It is made to look like the referee has an agenda that serves Haim's purpose. Would a referee really do that? I'll bet not. I am glad that this abuse has not continued but dealing referees is not for publication.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9633767.post-77716162784363321412012-05-07T12:40:06.546-07:002012-05-07T12:40:06.546-07:00Hells: While that explanation indeed seems to be t...Hells: While that explanation indeed seems to be the obvious one, this is what Menger had to say about it:<br /><br />"Since reactions with imidazole were often found to be slower than those in water without imidazole, negative rate constants ensued. Note that the negative rate constants were not simply presented as a euphemism for an ordinary rate inhibition where one positive rate diminishes to a smaller positive rate...in actual fact, the experimental rate constants, in and of themselves, were found to be subzero and extolled as such"<br /><br />There's more in the JOC paper, including an explanation of how a negative rate constant could arise as an artifact of the difference in rates between the imidazole-catalyzed reaction minus the background reaction.Wavefunctionhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14993805391653267639noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9633767.post-7910607989860323972012-05-07T12:21:45.862-07:002012-05-07T12:21:45.862-07:00If memory serves, the footnote that Menger publish...If memory serves, the footnote that Menger published in the JOC article complaining of rejection by JACS was followed up by a short JOC editorial in a subsequent issue stating that Menger slipped the footnote into the final galley proofs, after review, and that the editors would never have knowingly let that footnote get published.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9633767.post-18409892156537408822012-05-07T12:09:20.669-07:002012-05-07T12:09:20.669-07:00"What was interesting was that the authors se..."What was interesting was that the authors seemed to derive negative rate constants for some of the reactions. Now, even college students will recognize this as odd; a rate constant is supposed to indicate the speed of a reaction. If it's positive, the reaction proceeds. If it's zero, the reaction halts. But what is a negative rate constant supposed to mean?"<br /><br />A negative rate constant mean that your concentration is falling<br />y'=ky solves to y=ce^kt, if k is negative then it decreases exponentially.<br /><br />What am I missing?Hellshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02470303256887078933noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9633767.post-85104693674875903542012-05-06T17:12:50.043-07:002012-05-06T17:12:50.043-07:00Jeff Shrager: That's a very interesting sugges...Jeff Shrager: That's a very interesting suggestion and I may have more to say about this sometime. Breaking up the paper into short bits might be interesting and lead to less bias, although I wonder how you will be able to avoid people considering facts out of context.Wavefunctionhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14993805391653267639noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9633767.post-16657282725822846182012-05-06T13:13:30.822-07:002012-05-06T13:13:30.822-07:00How peer review works (and by extension how scienc...How peer review works (and by extension how science works), were it fails and how it can be improved is a legitimate field of scientific inquiry – no need to be defensive. But in the end this is only a case study and we would need more systematic research into peer review.Tony Machhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14823430729798784689noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9633767.post-20804403255688989752012-05-04T07:58:43.748-07:002012-05-04T07:58:43.748-07:00It seems as thought the wrong lesson is being draw...It seems as thought the wrong lesson is being drawn here. As you quote Menger: "...the system ultimately worked." I think that we ought to be focusing on the word "ultimately". Although I am a terrific fan of peer review, approximately as it is now practiced, and although I appear to be in the minority here, I doubt that anyone in any part of this spectrum would disagree that it should be made more efficient, specifically, faster. It's not clear how that could happen, as peer review systems have long been operated by email and other digital means, so it's not that "the magical web" is going to improve that too much. Unfortunately, the supply of "expert reviewer time" is limited by the number of experts, and their time. (Here "expert" means anyone who could have a sufficient understanding of the topic at hand to say something useful about it). Perhaps we're going about peer review the wrong way. It's too hard to read and write a review of a whole paper in detail -- therein which lies the time problem. Perhaps review should be operated as a sort of bayesian adaptive trial (as in biomedicine), where you send parts of the paper to everyone who has ever published in the given journal, and they are each only asked a short question, which must be answered in 24 hours: does this paragraph make sense, or not (and you could see more if you need to to make your analysis, but you're not at all asked to review the whole paper), and so on. If you break the paper up into enough overlapping chunks, and fan it out to enough experts who have to make simple choices, perhaps you would speed up the review process...or something like that. I'm just thinking aloud here, but the key feature, it seems to me, is speed, not quality, of the system.Jeff Shragerhttp://nostoc.stanford.edu/jeffnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9633767.post-28489579143943210642012-05-04T04:50:58.136-07:002012-05-04T04:50:58.136-07:00Very interestingVery interestingWavefunctionhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14993805391653267639noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9633767.post-10723966302439650892012-05-03T14:51:41.778-07:002012-05-03T14:51:41.778-07:002006 pnas submission:
Contributed by Ronald Bresl...2006 pnas submission: <br />Contributed by Ronald Breslow, July 13, 2006<br /><br />last line:<br />(Klussman et al. have reported some relevant studies after our work was completed; ref. 6).<br /><br />Ref 6:<br />6. Klussman et al (2006) Nature 441, 621–623. publication date June 1, 2006; submission date Nov 21, 2005.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9633767.post-50531024124345572382012-05-01T14:39:00.737-07:002012-05-01T14:39:00.737-07:00its the submision date of the 2006 pnas and the la...its the submision date of the 2006 pnas and the last line that are really interestingAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9633767.post-62610133782717218072012-05-01T13:43:37.144-07:002012-05-01T13:43:37.144-07:00I once crticized a big shot and Richard Schowen ac...I once crticized a big shot and Richard Schowen accepted the paper. And believe me I was (and still am) a nobody. So it's not always that simple. We all like to think there are good guys and there bad guys. It's not as simple as that unfortunately. There are twists and turns and double flips and tripple loups.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9633767.post-50606319673986392272012-05-01T13:26:44.354-07:002012-05-01T13:26:44.354-07:00We assume Menger and Haim were right but do we kno...We assume Menger and Haim were right but do we know for sure?<br />Menger was able to publish in top journals (jacs, acr) criticizing Jencks, Houk, and Breslow. Just because Menger had the last say, does it make him right? Was Menger's critique of Houk in his paper titled 'fudge it' fair? And his ACR article criticizing Jenck's entropy argument correct?<br />Nitpicking may be important in science but is it always? and lastly....of course Breslow and others knew there is no such thing as a negative rate constant. What he meant was that you can have apparent observed rate constants that are negative. Perhaps this was misleading or bad style to some. But it was quite clear to others.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9633767.post-39413060636283259902012-05-01T05:48:25.990-07:002012-05-01T05:48:25.990-07:00Thanks, that's pretty interesting. Perhaps tha...Thanks, that's pretty interesting. Perhaps that sheds some light on the rather strange, self-contradictory comments from the JACS editors.Wavefunctionhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14993805391653267639noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9633767.post-86630634571294304552012-05-01T05:47:21.565-07:002012-05-01T05:47:21.565-07:00Thanks Paul, I do think it's a very interestin...Thanks Paul, I do think it's a very interesting story in the sociology of peer review, and one that would be very useful for students and green researchers. And I indeed keep thinking of how blogs have potentially completely transformed this process. <br /><br />As an aside, I would love to congratulate the Nature editor who saw it fit to publish Menger's report.Wavefunctionhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14993805391653267639noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9633767.post-14451950727038860292012-05-01T05:44:06.793-07:002012-05-01T05:44:06.793-07:00Anon: Thanks for those references. The situation i...Anon: Thanks for those references. The situation is getting curiouser and curiouser. PNAS papers seem to carry their share of problems, as was pointed out by Derek and some other bloggers a while back.Wavefunctionhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14993805391653267639noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9633767.post-62200619329954934072012-05-01T01:52:08.284-07:002012-05-01T01:52:08.284-07:00First of all: a lovely and insightful post! These ...First of all: a lovely and insightful post! These things are at the heart of human nature, scientists or not... When there's people involved, there's reputations, relationships, expectations, etc... When there's people involved, it's hard to solely stick to the facts...<br /><br />Also, the <i>Nature</i> Commentary starts on page <b>666</b>, a mere coincidence? ;-)groenedraeckhttps://www.google.com/noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9633767.post-18120015991712802012012-04-30T22:08:15.706-07:002012-04-30T22:08:15.706-07:00Check out the acknowledgements in this Breslow PNA...Check out the acknowledgements in this Breslow PNAS paper from 1992 (http://www.pnas.org/content/90/4/1208.full.pdf) (a paper that deals with further research on the topic of the sloppy JACS papers discussed here). Breslow thanks Richard Schowen for comments. This individual was the JACS associate editor who handled the critiques of the sloppy papers, and appeared to stonewall the critical manuscripts.Pinko Punkohttp://blog.3bulls.netnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9633767.post-45784297223667667182012-04-30T18:29:05.642-07:002012-04-30T18:29:05.642-07:00Absolutely fantastic post, Ash. Profs should be pr...Absolutely fantastic post, Ash. Profs should be printing it out to use in senior seminars on non-experiment-related aspects of a career in chemistry.<br /><br />It is incredibly frustrating to see--laid so bare--"truth" have such a hard time rising to the surface. This is the "old boys' club" at work, with members of the elite/in-crowd looking out for each other instead of looking out for what is right.<br /><br />And full props to Haim and Menger for sticking to their guns, then using the rotten experience to draw attention to problems with the system. Perhaps if they were our age, they'd have started a blog.Paulhttp://blog.chembark.comnoreply@blogger.com