Re: [MLUG - DISCUSSION] Opinion or research?

["Diana Hargus" <EMAIL:PROTECTED>]

As a matter of fact, that makes very good sense.  As to the points you made 
at the beginning, they follow in the following order:

Not peer reviewed
In his original line of expertise
The publisher's reputation is unknown
The person that pushed the book to be published was connected to the author
The publisher was most probably selected due to the above reason as well as 
being a small fish in the big pond of NAS publishing
The book was most likely written and targeted towards a specific demographic 
due to the material of the study and presented as "Science" on the jacket of 
the book

The study was based on 6 indiviuduals (the other 2 were rejected as not 
fitting the theory profile), <sarcasm on> this is a grand study <sarcasm 
off> and has me irked still, even after 4 years.  Thanks for the comments 
and reasoning.  Take care,

Diana


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Jonathan King" <EMAIL:PROTECTED>
To: "MLUG Off-Topic Discussion" <EMAIL:PROTECTED>
Sent: Monday, August 27, 2007 9:29 PM
Subject: Re: [MLUG - DISCUSSION] Opinion or research?


> On 8/27/07, Hargus, Diana <EMAIL:PROTECTED> wrote:
> > Just a quick survey of the academic people here:
> >
> > If you were to read a book authored by someone with a PhD after their 
> > name,
> > with the word "Science" in the title, and published by the imprinter of 
> > the
> > NAS (Joseph Henry Press), would you believe it to be a valid scientific
> > book/article/study?
>
> Not just from that description. The single most important factor here,
> and one you left out, is whether or not the work had been
> peer-reviewed or not. Having a Ph.D. after your name provides
> surprisingly little protection against writing something that turns
> out to be silly. (This is particularly true if you are writing outside
> of your area of expertise.) Connected to the peer review process,
> although also clearly separable, is the reputation of the journal or
> publisher the work appears in. Peer review is only as good as the
> reviewers you can convince to read Yet Another Paper (or book). So
> journals that publish good and interesting work tend to have good
> reviewers, and a virtuous cycle gets started. Similarly, poor journals
> (or publishers) have to settle for less perceptive reviewers (or else
> print things reviewers suggest aren't fit to print), and that's a
> vicious cycle.
>
> To be honest, I had never heard of Joseph Henry Press before, but a
> quick Google search tells me that it is sort of like the trade book
> imprint of the NAS. That could be promising, but it also tells me that
> we're not talking about a hard core science publisher. This ain't
> Springer Verlag, or even Oxford University Press (which does, however,
> print a fairly wide range of titles). It's most likely a book for a
> popular audience, which is fine, but most academic types would
> probably be more interested in the less popular book or books behind
> the book in question.
>
> Does that make sense?
>
> jking
>
>
>
> > Just curious...
> >
> > Diana Hargus
> >
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