Comment by bouchard
20 hours ago
> “It’s an unusual way of doing things,” says Kerstin Göpfrich, a synthetic biologist at Heidelberg University.
That's being kind; it's a complete overreaction, simply put.
20 hours ago
> “It’s an unusual way of doing things,” says Kerstin Göpfrich, a synthetic biologist at Heidelberg University.
That's being kind; it's a complete overreaction, simply put.
It's an over reaction if you have a decade to argue with morons.
I've had papers sit in peer review for two years, get rejected, then when they are finally published the other editors of the journal that rejected them came crawling in asking for the next paper in the series and promising the front page. Worse they ran a news story about our paper _in the journal that rejected it_ saying how groundbreaking it was.
The only people who think peer review still works are people who have never used it or people who have never had a novel idea in their lives.
> I've had papers sit in peer review for two years, get rejected
And for people who aren't in academia, lets just say the unspoken part: While one or more of the reviewers are actively trying to replicate the work so they can beat you to submission after rejecting you.
With the rise of pre-print archives is this still a problem?
1 reply →
What field are you in that you'd actually wait two years, rather than retract your submission and go somewhere else?
Not in academia, but aware of the process, I was wondering just the same.
As an outside observer, it does seem that the whole process is tedious, capricious, and corrupt. No wonder academia is crumbling - it deserves to, and it needs to be replaced with a new, better system.
> the whole process is tedious, capricious, and corrupt
Is there any human institution under the sun that doesn't labor under a litany of such criticisms?
1 reply →
[flagged]
6 replies →
I have always found this article on the matter quite revealing: https://www.experimental-history.com/p/the-rise-and-fall-of-...
In fairness, it's a workaround against something that likely should not have happened. Problems require creative (aka unusual) solutions.
Rejections from journals are not uncommon and sometimes it's for somewhat questionable reasons.
Uploading the manuscript to a preprint server and/or submitting to another journal, which Adamala is doing/planning to do, is the normal response.
Sending it to journalists beforehand is what I consider an overreaction.
It would only be effective if the significance of this work is clear. They certainly felt this message needed to reach people, and that it did work makes it self evident they were probably right.
12 replies →
Why would it be an overreaction?
1 reply →
> Sending it to journalists beforehand is what I consider an overreaction.
No knowledge on this particular situation. My guess is that they wanted to protect their work by getting it out there. This prevents someone from stealing it during the peer review process.
Journalists are meant to report on the news. This sounds like an interesting piece of science/news to me.
If you have something so truly revolutionary that everyone can see with their own two eyes how awesome it is you don't have to rely on a middleman to bless it. "Ok your loss"
7 replies →
[dead]