Comments on: How To Publish A Scientific Comment in 123 Easy Steps

By: PhilH

PhilH — Sun, 27 Sep 2009 00:52:57 +0000

Re: Bruce (#29), How many hundreds, thousands, of "scientific" papers would you guess were written between 1912 and 1960 saying that Alfred Wegners' plate tectonics theory was not only wrong but stupid? Nothing has changed.

By: codeyeti

codeyeti — Sat, 26 Sep 2009 23:38:46 +0000

This sort of story is just depressing. When did science become such a bad word?

By: Ron Cram

Ron Cram — Sat, 26 Sep 2009 11:48:12 +0000

Re: Some Guy (#21), Re: tty (#27), After reading the thread further down, I see you both had a similar comment to mine above. I also think such a journal could become "high impact."

By: Ron Cram

Ron Cram — Sat, 26 Sep 2009 11:39:59 +0000

If science is self-correcting, perhaps we need a “Journal of Scientific Review.” The journal would be dedicated to improving the process of scientific review and would allow authors and reviewers to publish the full story regarding papers they have written, reviewed, commented on or been denied a comment on. Scientists could also publish comments on corrigenda which fail to admit all of the faults, errors, misdirections and faulty conclusions of pseudoscientific papers.

Of course, this would be in addition to the earlier proposed “Journal of Climate and Statistics.” Perhaps I should go into the publication business.

By: MarcH

MarcH — Sat, 26 Sep 2009 09:00:44 +0000

Here’s the abstract of Trebino’s comment:

Amplitude ambiguities in second-harmonic generation frequency-resolved optical gating: comment.
OPTICS LETTERS / Vol. 34, No. 17 / September 1, 2009

The authors of an earlier paper [Opt. Lett. 32, 3558 (2007)] reported two “ambiguities” in second-harmonic generation
frequency-resolved optical gating (FROG). One ambiguity is simply wrong—a miscalculation.
The other is well known and easily avoided in simple well-known FROG variations. Finally, the authors’
main conclusion—that autocorrelation can be more sensitive to pulse variations than FROG—is also wrong.

For the record the comment was 1 page including references. The final paragaph reads:

“We thank the reviewer for confirming our calculations.”

Thanks Rick for sharing your experience. It seems that the FROG may live another day.

By: Jim

Jim — Sat, 26 Sep 2009 05:42:45 +0000

There is a basic issue here is that it is very hard to
set up an absolutely fair system to deal with
“he said, she said” type disputes. Someone above mentioned
that if you contradict known work, then authors of known
work have to be contacted. And how many times have we
heard “My work differs from the big names in the field
so they prevented it from being published”. Some journals
actually allow you to nominate lists of people who should
not referee your work due to conflict of interest.

When I read the account, rather amusing as it was a
couple of things came to minds. Life is not fair. Job
realised that in biblical times. Second, there is
more than one way to skin a cat. Basically, Dr Trebino
should have realized that early, and beyond a certain
stage he should have bailed on the comment and worked
on plan B. Write a paper, and slide the comment into
the paper. I have done that when a comment was rejected.
If you are academically smarter, then you should be
better at working the journal system to your advantage.

BTW, I write a comment every two or three years. Every now
and then I get in a bad mood, and instead of going home
and kicking the dog, I write a comment on some piece of
garbage that irritated me more than most. However, when I
do this I do not always expect it to be published. Just
noting that there are errors is not often enough to get
published, some other point needs to be made.

By: ianl

ianl — Sat, 26 Sep 2009 01:45:49 +0000

SMc quote from #16″

“Climate scientists want to suck and blow when dealing with the public. They want to issue press releases – often even more lurid than the original article (something not permitted in penny mining promotions) – and they want IPCC to cite their results.”

I’ve been reading this website for some few years now, and I believe that this is as close to the truth as SMc has permitted himself to come. His gentlemanly patience has been genuinely astonishing.

By: Hans Erren

Hans Erren — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 19:38:19 +0000

Re: Jonathan (#22), "The editors sent it to the authors of the original paper, and on the basis of a statement by the authors that my argument was wrong the comment was rejected, with no independent review whatsoever." Indeed, that's what happened to me too.

By: jorgekafkazar

jorgekafkazar — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 18:09:15 +0000

For some reason, the link didn’t post. One more try:
http://www.jir.com/index.html

By: Bruce

Bruce — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 18:08:22 +0000

“the vast majority of scientific papers are mainly correct.”

I don’t believe this anymore.