"Name And Address Supplied"
>
> Right, a lot of people are 'frozen out' of the publication process,
> because they are cranks who produce bad manuscripts. This is exactly
> what a peer review process is for.
>
The more prestigous journals and those in certain areas, like particle
physics, will get their share of crank submissions. However filtering out
these people isn't the main purpose of peer review. A lot of journals reject
about half of their submissions, and these are perfectly sober and serious
papers from qualified academics, but for some reason sub-standard. A paper
that doesn't report significant results is much more likely to be rejected
than one with a positive finding. A paper that repeats a previous
experiement with a different but related species (co-operative grooming in
mice instead of in rats) is likely to be rejected. A paper that tries a
technically difficult observation, like taking a census of bats in a natural
cave, is likely to be rejected.
>
> If today's independent researcher wishes to publish a book outside of
> the peer review process (a la Darwin) then there is nothing to stop
> them doing that. If they want to publish in obscure journals with zero
> or poor peer-review (a la Mendel) then they can do that also.
>
The problem is that the convention is developing that only peer-reviewed
journals are cited in other peer-reviewed publications. So the
self-publishing eccentric is still effectively frozen out of the discourse.
>
> The standards for the peer reviewed literature are somewhat higher,
> and I am confident that both of these historical figures could put the
> appropriate manuscript together if required.
>
The conventions are different, but not necessarily "higher". Most
scientific
papers are pretty boring and routine and the content would quickly be
blue-pencilled by the editor of Titbits. OTOH if you can discover a species
of hobbits then Titbits is interested.
>
> If I am writing an essay for a popular magazine, I'll possibly relax the
level of
> rigour I would require to get published in a scientific journal. The essay
> might go on to change the world. And you could argue that I wouldn't
> have got it through the peer review process. However, given that the
> ideas are good enough, an appropriately written version of the essay
> could have done. Do you see?
>
Peer reviewers are not stupid. Sometimes too much slack is given to
far-fetched ideas, for instance the theory that water has a memory for
substances once dissolved in it probably shouldn't have been published by
Nature. However if they had rejected the paper and it had turned out to be
correct, the damage would have been immense.

The problem is that an important idea and a crank idea look superficially
similar, because the crank always thinks that his theory is the one that
will totally revolutionise the field. When you add the fact that important
ideas frequently come from people outside the hierarchy (neither Darwin,
Einstein, Mendel or Crick and Watson had doctorates when they published
their seminal papers), it is not surprising that  mistakes are frequently
made.

Whether your important essay, appropriately referenced and written in the
passive voice, would make it into a journal is an open question. As well as
performing the ostensible academic function, the journal also performs a
social function, which is to protect the interests of those who control it.
As evolutionary biologists we would be very surprised if it were otherwise.
>
> Essentially, he wants the best of both worlds. He wants the kudos of a
> peer reviewed publication, but without any of the hard work and
> academic rigour that normally warrants this.
>
Of course. John's argument is largely theoretical and not backed up by
empirical observations. This doesn't mean that it is wrong, but it does mean
that the peer reviewer cannot say "Here's a body of data that deserves
publication".
I suspect that if he could cast his argument in mathematical terms and get
it to a mathematican, then, if sound, it would see the light of day.
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