A TSZ member recently made this claim:
Sanford’s recent paper with Cordova was rejected by multiple venues for bogus reasons. Everyone agreed the science is solid, but made up reasons why the paper should not be accepted.
And then is asked:
Name the venues and give their reasons for the rejection.
I’ve actually been asking this for literally years over at UD, although not lately. The claim that papers are rejected not because of the science but instead because of some other reason is often made. But I’ve never seen any actual evidence of this. Has anyone?
In fact, it’s also the stated reason from some at UD as to why they don’t even attempt to formally publish their work, they know it would simply be rejected for ideological reasons only.
Yet despite many years of asking I have never once seen any evidence for this claim. So in this thread I’d like to see the paper that was submitted, the journal or other it was submitted to and the rejection itself.
If nobody can supply any such evidence then this OP can be used in rebuttal in the future when such claims are again made, as we all know they will be.
Sal, EricMH, it should be possible for you to easily substantiate these claims.
A copy of the rejection email or letter should suffice, feel free to black out any sensitive areas.
I’ll also give you some time to work on your excuses as to why the above cannot possibly be done before making you off as “unable to support your claim”.
Rejected by multiple venues means multiple reasons for rejection and therefore multiple rejection letters and/or emails. At least some of that should be useful as evidence here, right? Even if you have to redact everything except the “made up reasons” for the rejection that would still count as evidence here.
I’ll leave Cordova’s paper up to him, but Wikipedia has the details on Sternberg and Meyer issue. It sounds pretty ideologically motivated to me.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sternberg_peer_review_controversy
In a statement issued by 10 October 2004 the journal declared that Sternberg had published the paper at his own discretion without following the usual practice of review by an associate editor. The Council and associate editors would have considered the subject of the paper inappropriate for publication as it was significantly outside “the nearly purely systematic content” of the journal, the Council endorses a resolution “which observes that there is no credible scientific evidence supporting ID as a testable hypothesis”, and the paper therefore “does not meet the scientific standards of the Proceedings”.
Another interesting one is Gonzalez tenure denial. Seems like his academic record was part of the issue, but also there was an anti-ID sentiment at work.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guillermo_Gonzalez_(astronomer)#Discovery_Institute_and_intelligent_design_campaign
The Discovery Institute filed a request for public records and as a result, in December 2007, Des Moines Register obtained faculty email records from 2005 that included discussions of intelligent design, and made mention of the impact that Gonzalez’s support for it might have on his prospects for tenure. Emails included one by John Hauptman who worried that the anti-Gonzalez sentiments were “starting to smack of a witch’s hanging.” Hauptman went on to vote against Gonzalez’s tenure in part over concerns about Gonzalez’s support of intelligent design.[24][31] The Discovery Institute writes that the email records “demonstrate that a campaign was organized and conducted against Gonzalez by his colleagues, with the intent to deny him tenure”.[32] In a letter to the Iowa State Daily, Physics and Astronomy Professor Joerg Schmalian stated that the e-mail “discussion was prompted by our unease with the national debate on intelligent design”, not the issue of tenure.[33]
@OMaigan, maybe you can do some legwork too, and pick out one of the often mentioned targets of discrimination and reference something showing they were rejected for non ideological reasons. For example, show that Dembski’s issues at Baylor were not related to ID at all.
And yet you are wrong. I’m not going to debate this with you, as you quote in your own comment the reason!
There you go. He did a bad. Case closed.
Remind me of Gonzalez’s publication record vs his peers?
Start your own OP for that, if you like. But I’d note that Baylor is a Christian University and they can do what they like regarding staffing decisions.
EDIT: Also you could quote some more of the Wikipedia page if you like? There’s plenty more on the “other” side too, but you just ignored that. Why?
Score so far:
Evidence that journals are rejecting papers for ideological reasons: 0
https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/t/developing-college-level-id-creation-courses/7408/262
https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/t/cordova-and-sanford-good-enough-for-a-secular-journal/7448
There are several threads at PS where Sal complains about being “piled on” and whines about his paper being rejected but never actually seems to consider the possibility if was just a shit paper rather then rejected for ideological reasons. And he does not give those reasons.
So, Eric, I’d take issue with this claim:
Who is “everyone” and who made up the reasons? I know you said you’d let Sal deal with that, but you said these words! And at the time you must have had your reasons for saying them, what were they?
Looks like EricMH was caught just regurgitating the standard ID-Creationist lies about all those rejected papers. Notice his attempts to distract by posting the usual DI dishonest spin on the Sternberg / Meyer deception.
Which at this point, even if it was precisely what they claim, represents a single instance over almost two decades! Not bad at all, really.
It’s not a very good distraction here however as Eric included in his quoted text the reason publishing the paper was wrong:
That clip-clop you hear is the Gish Gallop.
T_aquaticus,
Can you spot the labeling? How Trumpian of Wikipedia. 🙂
As OMagain already noted, we reviewed Sal and Sanford’s paper at PS: https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/t/cordova-and-sanford-good-enough-for-a-secular-journal/7448.
For the record, I would support its publication in a secular journal if the critiques were addressed, and the conclusion of the paper were well matched to the data. I think most my secular colleagues would agree. Yes, investigator reputation can help our hurt a paper’s chances, but not usually by much.
Science publication is not governed by some sort of loyalty test or belief statement, but in the quality of individual submissions. That is because science, in practice, is not ideological. Certainly ideological concerns often press into science, but scientific culture largely resists these incursions when they are exposed.
ID is pseudoscience, so I’m not sure why they aren’t allowed to describe it as such. The fact that Sternberg inserted the paper into the journal in secret as he was walking out the door says a lot.
I would characterize this as a difference in perspective. DI claims lots of rejected papers. I present some of the main ones the DI promotes. OMagain disagrees with the interpretation of events. We can go back and forth, but the point remains there are a number of well known instances that at least some people interpret as rejection for ideological reasons. I personally find the interpretation convincing, others do not. I’ll let the matter rest at this point.
Have you researched the history of science much? Why are you so sure the scientific establishment has always been great at rejecting ideology? Have you seen your phrenologist recently?
This seems badly confused to me — isn’t the eventual rejection of phrenology a reason to think that institutionalized scientific practices are good at getting rid of ideologically motivated explanations, over the long term?
In other words, whether or not the paper was rejected due to ideological motivations is itself an ideological question.
Glad we settled that so decisively.
Perhaps, but the point of contention is that censoring ID is not a problem b/c science is objective and resists ideology.
I disagree, case in point:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_racism#Charles_Darwin
If getting a paper rejected is censorship, then every single scientist has been censored. I don’t know of a single scientist who has not received a rejection letter for a paper. Rejection by editors without review has become more and more common as some journals are trying to select for higher impact papers. Sorry, but armchair mind reading is not evidence of impropriety.
Hey colewd, Eric is the one being Trumpian, in the “A lot of people are saying…” sense. Eric’s point appears to be that, because some people think the earth is flat, there MUST be some truth to the story.
Interesting. What lessons can we take home from the history of phrenology?
Why is it that today we reject phrenology? How come, in the absence of supporting data, did phrenology manage to remain popular for an extended period of time?
Who was promoting phrenology, and why?
It’s a victory for MN in the face of political and commercial interests.
If Eric had researched the history of science in more depth, he might at least have picked an example that was less likely to blow up in his face. [P-R.B.’s famous work, perhaps?]
Not quite. The main charge is the DI doesn’t really have a list of people and papers that were censored, and are just making things up.
I show there is such a list.
What is clear with each item is anti-IDism is a factor in the decision made to reject the person or paper.
If there are legitimate alternative grounds for rejecting each item, then ID should never even be mentioned in these discussions. But it is.
That fact alone is sufficient to show there is anti-ID bias at work in mainstream avenues of scientific research censoring ID work.
So, there is no ambiguity about this claim. The DI is entirely correct that anti-ID bias is censoring ID work.
I’d characterize it as a Creationist who got caught lying and is now squirming to save face.
You made specific claims about a specific paper being rejected in many venues merely for ideological reasons. You were lying.
You cited one which was recalled because a YEC editor sneaked it past proper peer review.
Only other ID-Creationists make that demonstrably false claim.
Run away! Run away!
No, that is not at all the point of contention.
The point of contention is not that scientific practices are always resistant to ideology (who would ever claim that?) but whether there is an anti-ID bias in how ID-friendly publications have been received. And we have established that whether or not one sees any such bias is itself subjective — it depends on which explanation of events better suits whatever one was disposed to believe anyway. I don’t see any anti-ID bias at work here because I think that Sternberg and Gonzalez were treated fairly according to the relevant professional norms.
You didn’t show any list. Like the good little IDiot trooper you mindlessly regurgitated the DI’s standard propaganda.
WAAAAH! Poor butt-hurt Creationist. Sorry Eric but science doesn’t offer an Affirmative Action program for evidence-free stupidity like ID-Creationism. If you clowns had anything of substance to offer that would pass scientific muster it would happily be published in professional journals but you don’t. So you make excuses and lie about papers being rejected for ideological reasons.
EricMH,
Ah, yes. Surely true. I wouldn’t accept an IDism paper into a science journal.
IDism is an ideology that EricMH doesn’t even admit exists, except perhaps to play a victim as if he had no choice but to embrace it. He thinks critics of IDT should only speak about IDT, not IDism (as if they are distinct!). Only IDists would publish IDism as if other people, not just evangelical Protestants, should adopt it.
IDT attempts to be ‘strictly scientific’ & scores no more than a 1/10 for original thought & impact. Yet EricMH has by now idolized the metaphor ‘Design’ much like a fanatic (do it the Salvador way!?) with little sense of scientific, philosophical & theological/worldview proportion. This is anything but leadership or helpful.
I note that the overwhelming majority of rejected scientific papers have men as primary authors. As a confirmed male chauvinist, I argue that the statistics are incontrovertible, there’s a bias against male authors!
Oh wait, I forgot that I’m a radical feminist. I note that more papers with women as primary author are rejected than accepted. Clearly, this is a bias against women!
But seriously folks, as a squirrel, I note that not one single paper by a squirrel has appeared in ANY scientific journal. Talk about bias!
My nephew is well known in the world of neurology (I have no clue what he does, but he’s lead author of a lot of publications and spends his life either researching or giving talks around the world). And he contends that in narrow highly specialized scientific fields, there might only be two or three scientists qualified to do a peer review – who are therefore reviewing the work of a competitor. He claims truly unbiased scientific peer review in the best journals is an ideal impossible to attain. Yet these journals must publish something, and they have a reputation to maintain. They cannot afford to publish religious pseudoscience claptrap; the bias against claptrap is very real.
if humans are involved then human motivations are involved. YES easily in creationist papers being offered proufound hostility to creationism would lead to papers being rejected. I know in canada a government science position was denied a man only because of creationist presumptions. no claim of ability problems was made.
I don’t know about this paper(s) but it would be typical.
It won’t help them. truth will prevail.
Most of my manuscripts have been rejected, often without any review at all. I could easily build a list as large as the ones claimed by the DI to have been rejected “for anti-ID bias,” and declare that the scientific establishment is against me.
But I have to be honest. I’m not paid for lying, but for actual research results. So, when I have rechecked criticisms, many of the manuscripts had horrible problems, and I should be grateful they were rejected, rather than suffer some public humiliation. Other works I have improved and eventually published. Some manuscripts went through so many journals, or so many review rounds that I was nearly about to quit on them.
That’s how it works. Sorry.
Well, at the same time, some bogus shit does get through. So I bet that the DI will get away with a lot of bullshit eventually. But lying and pretending to be persecuted is part of the ID-creationist movement. ID is, clearly, not about science, it’s about perception and politics. The want their donors to believe that they are fighting a just cause against evil “evolutionists” or “Darwinists” who don’t want the ID “true” to be known. Eric is learning the deception game very well.
I’m not familiar with such a list. Can you link?
I’m aware of this: https://www.discovery.org/id/peer-review/
But not a list of rejected papers and the reasons for rejection. Can you link?
That’s not yet been shown to be the case. Where is the evidence? The purpose of this thread is to examine that evidence.
Score so far:
Evidence that journals are rejecting papers for ideological reasons: 0
Each of those instances is up for interpretation.
It could be clarified by a series of yes/no questions that you would need to answer.
For example:
Should authors be penalised for skipping normal procedures when publishing their own work in a journal they have direct access to?
Should the publication record of people applying for tenure be considered?
Are you aware of Sternberg “punishment” for his actions?
If so, do you think they are appropriate?
And so on and on.
So, EricMH, what was Sternberg’s punishment in the end? And you would presumably support doing what he did in order to get Intelligent Design papers published, right?
Just confirm you’d do what he did and that’ll do for me.
Score so far:
Evidence that journals are rejecting papers for ideological reasons: 0
The correct term is “rejected”, and it is an extremely common event in the world of science. Papers are rejected for non-ideological reasons all of the time, and almost all are rejected because they either don’t fit the journal’s topical aims, or the paper lacks scientific merit. Before you claim that ideology is the reason for rejection, you need to cover those other two bases.
That’s rather dishonest. You are the one who brought up ID.
And so far all we have is their word that ID is the reason for rejection, given the lack of actual evidence so far.
This can get infuriating. I’m guessing that 1) papers submitted to scientific journals have been rejected, 2) The authors of these papers have some connection to ID; and 3) We can confidently conclude that problem (1) is entirely explained by reason (2).
But I have to guess because, so far, nobody has presented any such papers, nobody has presented the explanation for rejection returned from any journals, and the accusations of bias have been made exclusively by ID proponents. But without any evidence presented, claims that bias is “clear” are hollow.
(And I do note that Sternberg didn’t lose his pay, his office, his job, or his library access, despite his practice of NOT returning library materials. I also note that Sternberg’s position as editor was a revolving position, and he knew going in exactly when he would be rotated out. He inserted his paper without peer review knowing in advance that would be the last issue he would edit.
I suppose it’s again worth mentioning that Gonzales was informed when he took the tenure-track position at Iowa State that his performance would be evaluated on exactly the factors he failed on. These were students graduated (he had none), grants received (he received none), original publications from work at Iowa State (he had none).)
The ID search for martyrs looks pretty desperate.
The technical term for this phenomenon is ‘Expelled Syndrome’, after the DI-promoted film Expelled.
In some cases, when spoken about by certain people in the IDM, ‘Intelligent Design’ theory (IDT) takes the form of ‘grievance studies.’ A lot of victim-playing & masquerading (in this case, flirting with religion) going on there.
Truth actually flies out the window at important moments among every single leader of the IDM that I’ve met personally (at the DI’s summer program in Seattle), when it comes to their science, philosophy, theology/worldview approach involving IDT/IDism. Grievance is the main name of the game. Blame is what drives the DI’s engine.
At the same time, they disallow themselves avowal of ANY ideological influence on their own views; they are the only non-ideological players on the pitch – everyone but an IDist is an ideologue. This is ludicrous, yet that’s exactly what we hear in EricMH’s holier-than-thou pretentious IDism.
That is why EricMH can look himself in the mirror & say: “we are bravely & valiantly being persecuted unfairly for our ‘strictly scientific’ ideas & I don’t understand why most world-leading religious scientists reject our (science) ideology.”
So much evidence that must be conveniently and tactically avoided by EricMH, every day, almost like a long-tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs, to maintain the IDist ideological facade:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_scientific_bodies_explicitly_rejecting_intelligent_design
Back when I was commenting at UD I repeatedly asked KF, BA77, Dionisio and others to draft their work as publishable papers and submit them, and the response was always that it would be wasted effort because of the long history of papers demonstrating ID being rejected on non-scientific grounds.
I then asked them to submit a paper for publication and then post the paper along with the rejection letters, including the reviewers’ comments, so that we could discuss them. The sound of crickets was deafening.
It’s at times like this that I comfort myself with the sage words of Richard Dawkins:
there is no sensible limit to what the human mind is capable of believing, against any amount of contrary evidence… we are completely wasting our time arguing the case and presenting the evidence for evolution… no evidence, no matter how overwhelming, no matter how all-embracing, no matter how devastatingly convincing, can ever make any difference.
Interesting and right on many points.
Yes it makes sense many fields have so few that it ends up peers reviewing competitors. I don’t know if that changes things but the small numbers means that motivations are possibly bad ones.
Unbiased is a unlikely result. Thats why creatuonists have a right to suspicion on top of raw data.
Well, the best way to test the DI claim is to try publishing a paper that explicitly relates to ID, and keeps the connections implicit but has the same mathematical content. If the former is rejected but the latter is accepted, especially if its the same journal, that shows the DI is correct. I shall consider trying this with my next paper 🙂
Well, why not?
EricMH,
If I understand your experimental design, you are proposing submitting the same paper to the same journal twice, first with an explicit connection to IDT, and then with the connection to IDT made implicit.
Your hope being that you would be vindicated if the first paper were rejected, but the second was accepted. There’s a problem here, if the ‘explicit’ connection to IDT is specious or misleading; this could result in the ‘explicit’ paper being rejected because of the specious nature of the connection per se, rather than any aversion to IDT.
[By way of example, I find your attempts to tie Mutual ASC to evolution to be entirely specious. You have declined to explain why the inability of evolution to increase MASC represents any impediment whatsoever to evolution generating unlimited quantities of ASC.]
You are also banking on a fairly impressive level of forgetfulness on the part of the editors, by the way. My money is on the editors rejecting your second paper, too, out of sheer petulance.
To generate any significance at all, you really need a cross-over design with multiple papers to different journals . And if you really are that productive, I encourage you to drop the whole IDT charade and get on with the math. You’ll be much happier.
I note that you cannot, in any test, submit the ‘implicit’ version before the ‘explicit’ version. I hope you can see why.
Pity you didn’t do that test first before lying and falsely claiming multiple rejections for an ID paper just for ideological reasons.
Yes, this is a good point I thought of. The connection is fundamental, not specious. I am using Dembski’s active information as a machine learning objective function. So there is a direct connection. Also, his vertical no free lunch will be relevant.
Your other point about the journal rejecting the second paper due to memory is good too. So, I may have to submit to separate journals. To address that problem I will first submit the first paper to multiple journals to get a repeatable rejection. Then I will submit the second paper, which will get accepted sooner, if there is bias and the content is any good in the first place 🙂
Overall this could take quite awhile.
One clear cut case is when the 2010 biological information proceedings were to be published with World Scientific and then one of the Darwin activists bothered them until the contract was canceled. If memory serves…
It does not.
https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Biological_Information:_New_Perspectives#Published_at_Last
This was the one where creationists tried to use the reputation of the university to give their “converence’ some presitage it did not deseve.
There’s plenty to look at if you want a real understanding:
In summary, creationists rented a room and Cornell and then said they were at a Cornell . conference.
Dishonest? Seems that way.
http://www.antievolution.org/cgi-bin/ikonboard/ikonboard.cgi?s=4f608b603eea1f50;act=ST;f=14;t=7372
http://pandasthumb.org/archives/2012/03/creationists-co.html
This won’t of course change your mind. I don’t expect it to.
We can wait. But, to be clear, in the meanwhile it would be dishonest to repeat the claim that papers are being rejected in such a manner as you’ve not experienced that personally and you cannot produce any evidence that anybody else has.
Note how far we have come from:
swamidass,
“Secular journals, secular colleagues, secular scientists.” Such is Swamidass’ evangelicalistic fetish with secularism.
ROTFL! Nobody here but us “impersonal objectivists”, value-free, neutral scientists (they’re real, didn’t you know, not just a figment of scientific ideologues!) who haven’t learned one iota about the history & philosophy of science! = P
And in practise, non-mainline evangelical Protestantism isn’t ideological either, right? Science & evangelicalism are immune from ideology, just because the people doing them are not actually human beings, but rather pseudo-human robots without souls … or something like that, according to Swamidass if one takes his words seriously.
According to this hyper-confident scientistic logic, supposedly thus Swamidass’ “Genealogical Adam & Eve” is also “not ideological” AT ALL, of course. = P This is because Swamidass doesn’t believe scientists hold ideologies that greatly or even minimally impact their science; they are just ‘strictly scientific’ & should be treated objectively, not as human beings when they ‘do science’. And we are supposed to believe Swamidass simply because he is a scientist & scientists are, in his worldview, “the fairest of all”.
Mirror, mirror on the wall, who is the fairest of them all? “Scientists of all kinds,” shouts Swamidass, “and secular scientists especially are the fairest”. This is Swamidassian illogic; much to the appreciation of atheists and agnostists Swamidass gives credit.
I see others have already rubbed your nose in this latest batch of DI lies you’re mindlessly regurgitating.
Doesn’t it bother you even a little they’re using you as such a tool?
Why? I am just describing an experiment I could run. I still stand by the rest of the DI claims. The counter reasons given are merely spurious, maybe because the critics don’t want to obviously deny a publication purely because they are anti-ID. If it was that blatant, they could easily get sued, or at least make their ant-ID bias obvious to third parties.
Fore example:
Not sure what you get out of the thread, but the anti-ID bias is very strong. The pretext given ‘this was presented as a Cornell conference’ who accepts publications based on venue?!? If that was really the reason, that says more about Springer than it does about the conference.
From Springer’s actual email, the problem appears to be the ID link, not whether there was misrepresentation about the venue:
“The book has been acquired and reviewed by our experienced series
editors of the book series “Intelligent Systems Reference Library”
so it was a natural choice to publish it there under the umbrella of
applied sciences. Thank you for your very valuable remark concerning
Intelligent design, we will doublecheck the situation with the reviewers
and the book editors and definitely will add a suitable Biology code.”
Also, read through the PS thread regarding Cordova’s paper.
https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/t/cordova-and-sanford-good-enough-for-a-secular-journal/7448/57
There is no criticism of the conclusion or method or results. In fact, Matheson, vocal critic of religion and ID over at Biologos, agrees with Cordova’s conclusion, along with the point that novelty is a separate concern from technically sound. The only criticisms from Swamidass & co. are ‘tone’ and ‘we’d like more iterations’. Just standard feedback that could easily be remedied. Nothing that merits a reject. However, the paper was rejected from various venues.
So, my overall takeaway is that there is clear ID censorship going on, and what’s more, the censors know they are doing wrong and look for pretexts to do the rejection.
Based on my own experience in both secular and religious academia, I don’t find this surprising at all.
This is false.
The technically competent commenters noted that Ohno’s error had been explained previously, rendering Sal’s paper ‘not novel’ and therefore unsuitable for publication in most journals. Separately, they noted that there were a number of methodological errors in the paper, rendering it unpublishable anywhere, in its current form.
Your reference to ‘we’d like more iterations’ is a particularly egregious misrepresentation of the thread.
One mean the DI lies you knee-jerk regurgitated then folded like wet tissue when asked to support them? Those DI claims?
Ah, there comes your own lie once again. Looks like you can’t support that one either.
LOL! You make such a good little mindless stooge for the DI. With ass-kissing like that you’re a shoo-in for a paying position at the DI when your military hitch is over.