ekurtz99{at}WhoKnowsWhere.com wrote:

> EK:-
> I don't dispute that the editorial review/peer review system is
> effective in dealing with submissions from crackpots.
> The point is - how
> well does it deal with serious submissions?

JE:-
The two are linked. W.D. Hamilton the author
of Hamilton's Rule went from being an
honoured Professor to just a "crank".
The rejection by Science of Hamilton's
paper re: a testable hypothesis of how
AIDS may have started became an all out
intellectual war between Hamilton and
the establishment he served.

Hamilton was suggesting that AIDS was
started by a gross error of a lab in Afica
which was producing polio vacine in an acknowledged
dangerous medium where viruses from one species
could have crossed over into another. This batch of
vacine was allegedly forcibly trialed on local
tribal people. I think Hamilton
was looking for evidence of AIDS related
viruses in the local chimp populations where the
lab that made the questionable vacine was
know to be situated because a bodily fluid
from chimps was knowingly and incorrectly used
to culture the polio vacine only at that particular lab.
If AIDS related viruses were found in these chimp
populations then an on-the-face-of-it link
would have been documented requiring futher research.
Hamilton died of a malarial attack while attempting
this important work. To my knowedge this work ceased
at his death. For myself, the whole thing stinks.

W. D. Hamilton went from being a highly respected in-group
Professor to just an to out-group "crank" in a milli-
second as the established and monopolistic peer review
process closed ranks to protect themselves, their
associated researchers and the people who financed
them. In evolutionary theory terms: group selection
via an established order destroyed a valid (refutable)
hypothesis of science because it was politically
convenient for people with a higher status.  They
relatively gained but absolutely lost because science
absolutely lost. We will never know by how much this act
of cultural group selection will delay a cure for AIDS
and thus how many people must needlessly die because
this research was halted. Economists call this an
"opportunity cost". It is a term evolutionary theorists
should aquaint themselves with because selection is all
about minimising opportunity costs.

It appears W. D. Hamilton was hoist by his own
petard because he made exactly the same error
within Hamilton's rule. The rule suggests an altruistic
gene can be measured to just relatively spread when rb>c
ignoring the RATIONAL fact that it may be totally
(absolutely) reduced where this CANNOT be
determined via the rule as it stands unless the
total fitness of the actor is put back into
the rule. A relative fitness gain for just an
absolute fitness loss cannot be selected FOR.

> EK:-
> Consider the following:
>
> =======================================================
> Brain. 2000 Sep;123 ( Pt 9):1964-9.
> Reproducibility of peer review in clinical neuroscience. Is agreement
> between reviewers any greater than would be expected by chance alone?
>
> Rothwell PM, Martyn CN.
>
> Department of Clinical Neurology, Radcliffe Infirmary, Oxford, UK.
> peter.rothwell{at}clneuro.ox.ac.uk
>
> We aimed to determine the reproducibility of assessments made by
> independent reviewers of papers submitted for publication to clinical
> neuroscience journals and abstracts submitted for presentation at
> clinical neuroscience conferences. We studied two journals in which
> manuscripts were routinely assessed by two reviewers, and two
> conferences in which abstracts were routinely scored by multiple
> reviewers. Agreement between the reviewers as to whether manuscripts
> should be accepted, revised or rejected was not significantly greater
> than that expected by chance [kappa = 0.08, 95% confidence interval (CI)
> -0.04 to -0.20] for 179 consecutive papers submitted to Journal A, and
> was poor (kappa = 0.28, 0.12 to 0. 40) for 116 papers submitted to
> Journal B.
> =======================================================
>
> There is no obvious reason to think that these results are unique to
> clinical neuroscience.
>
> The anonymity of the process of review, and the technical difficulty for
> an outsider (or an associate editor) to judge whether a rejection is or
> is not fair, gives a single hostile or inept reviewer an effective veto
> on a paper. I have not met anyone in my own line of work (genomic
> sequence analysis) who does not complain bitterly about the unfairness
> and arbitrariness of the process. Such complaints appear to be universal:
>
> "Mention “peer review” and almost every scientist will regale you with
> stories about referees submitting nasty comments, sitting on a
> manuscript forever, or rejecting a paper only to repeat the study and
> steal the glory."
>
> Peer Review and Quality: A Dubious Connection? (2001)
> http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/reprint/293/5538/2187a.pdf
>
> Ironically, "Science" is as bad as any other journal. I have seen
> serious submissions to that journal based on months of detailed work
> dismissed by reviewers in a few sloppily-written and uncomprehending
> sentences.

JE:-
Does EK support or reject an attempt by sbe
to trial a democratic and transparent peer
review process?

Regards,

John Edser
Independent Researcher

PO Box 266
Church Pt
NSW 2105
Australia

edser{at}tpg.com.au
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