Peer review is no panacea, to be sure, just slightly less bad than all
the other proposals on offer (like democracy).
I wonder, with respect to the first paper, whether it really was a
failure of peer review, or whether the offending passages were added
after review, and the failure is of the editor to have read the final
version closely.
Chris Green
York U.
Toronto, Canada
=====================
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
1) The paper "'Mitochondria, the missing link between body and soul:
Proteomic perspective evidence" by Warda and Han was published on-line in
the respected peer-reviewed journal _Proteomics_ on Jan 23, 2008.
As reported by Lisa Guterman in the Chronicle of Higher Education, this
fine paper has buried within it a rather startling conclusion, just in
time for Darwin's birthday. According to Warda and Han:
"The points that show proteomics overlapping between different forms of
life are more likely to be interpreted as a reflection of a single common
fingerprint initiated by a mighty creator".
That's right. Warda and Han explain their findings as caused by the work
of a mighty creator. This astounding interpretation was first noticed,
not by their reviewers, including one who "does a lot of reviewing for
the journal", but by a biologist, PZ Myers. In his blog _Pharyngula_
Myers lays into the issue with the following choice words:
"It should have been savaged by any competent reviewer. It's not to say
it is a complete loss; there really is a substantial, knowledgeable core
here, but it is pimpled with genuinely bizarre eruptions of unsupported
lunacy that make no sense, are poorly written, and reveal that at least
one person involved in the writing of the paper has an unscientific
agenda that they were willing to interject into an otherwise sensible
discussion. And it's glaringly obvious. The rotten bits leap out vividly,
as if those sections were scrawled in crayon and dung, and I don't
understand how a reviewer could have been unjarred by their inclusion,
unless they were just rubber-stamping the whole paper unread."
Alas, that "knowledgeable core" and "sensible discussion" was quickly
revealed in an update to be substantially plagiarized, according to
Myers. If you'd like to admire this 'train wreck" for yourself, sorry,
you're too late. It's already been retracted.
http://tinyurl.com/2o7ot5 [retraction statement]
http://tinyurl.com/3amvre [Myer's blog]
Guterman, L. (2008). Biology journal publishes paper that appears to
embrace creationism. _The Chronicle of Higher Education_, February 7.
2) The helpful paper "A mathematic model for the determination of total
area under glucose tolerance and other metabolic curves" was published in
the peer-reviewed journal _Diabetes Care_ in 1994 by M. Tai. So what, you
say? Well, as reported in _New Scientist_ recently, physics grad student
Richard Taylor (writing as "Flip Tomato") noticed that there was
something darned familiar about that model.
No, it wasn't plagiarism. It was an independent re-invention of integral
calculus (dividing the area under the curve into rectangles and triangles
and calculating their areas). Apparently someone named Newton had gotten
there first, by about, oh, just over 300 years. No one noticed, certainly
not the reviewers, and 90 papers (New Scientist's count) cited what Tai
modestly called "the Tai method". You've got to admire him for that
achievement, but his math education, not so much. And ditto for the
reviewers and for those who cited him.
Tai, M. (1994).A mathematical model for the determination of total area
under glucose tolerance and other metabolic curves. Diabetes Care, Vol
17, Issue 2 152-154.
http://care.diabetesjournals.org/cgi/content/abstract/17/2/152
http://tinyurl.com/34xdb4 [Flip Tomato's blog]
http://www.newscientist.com/backpage.ns?id=mg19726432.700 [New Scientist
news]
Stephen
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Stephen L. Black, Ph.D.
Professor of Psychology, Emeritus
Bishop's University e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
2600 College St.
Sherbrooke QC J1M 1Z7
Canada
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
---
To make changes to your subscription contact:
Bill Southerly ([EMAIL PROTECTED])
---
To make changes to your subscription contact:
Bill Southerly ([EMAIL PROTECTED])
