Wow. Just wow.
Slate online posted the peer review guidelines for a Creationist journal as its hot document today. And I've got to say that the concept of Creationist peer reviews fucking terrifies me. Why? It means that these nutjobs take themselves seriously. I currently work in academia and peer review is a massive part of getting any scientific paper published. It acts as an internal system to prevent wildly speculative, falsified or just plain wrong data from being published as scientific fact. The reviewers are accredited scientists, at the top of their field. They do not, however, agree with the viewpoint of the paper's author by default. Peer reviewing is an arduous (and often insanely political) process that is the bane of most serious scientists' lives.
I immediately forwarded the link to co-worker M who finds this stuff as horrendous as I do. His response was to spend the rest of the morning reading the journal and forwarding me links.
Taking a random example: Dinosaur Nests Reinterpreted
Highlights include: overusage of quotation marks around the word "nest", scientific figures drawn representing how the authour imagines how the eggs dinosaur nests were arranged, several sections citing academic(ish) evidence for stress conditions followed by the section headed "Evidence of Stress Conditions from Scripture", the entirety of the "Acknowledgements" section (including praising the Lord, classy move guy) and the entire thing being written in a style that would have gotten me kicked out of my undergraduate degree course.
Read and enjoy.
mumbo jumbo for thursday
at 12:35
Thursday 14 February 2008
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9 comments:
Wait, wait...OK, finished laughing...ahem - this person is saying that dinosaurs were stressed out because a flood, no, wait - THE flood - was imminent, and they were forced to lay their eggs in a haphazard manner (because we all know that egg laying is an exact science and under ideal circumstances, chickens, turtles and the like will arrange intricate patterns while depositing their eggs, right? I mean, were the dinosaurs in a hurry because they didn't want to miss the ark? Were they nervous that Noah wouldn't choose two of them? There are people out there who actually believe this?
Oops, I forgot a parenthesis.
Alex: I'm actually a managing editor of 5 scientific journals, and my main job is to oversee the peer review process-the idea that these claims can be put through the same process is just fucking creepy.
Oh my fucking god, I just read the ackowledgments section...I could only imagine one of the authors for my forensics journal trying that shit. "I would like to thank Jesus for giving me the knowledge to accurately assess the cause of death for this patient and I pray that though he died from autoerotic asphyxiation, that the aforementioned patient finds his way to heaven."
Sigh. These people are an embarrassment.
Faith. It's called faith.
Stop scratching around in the earth for some proof of God's existence and the veracity of the Old Testament.
Have some freakin' faith in what you believe and take a chill pill.
And damn, was that dinosaur egg article was rough! I only skimmed it and my brain is screaming in distress.
I mean, were the dinosaurs in a hurry because they didn't want to miss the ark? Were they nervous that Noah wouldn't choose two of them?
I refer you to Robot Chicken, which quite scientifically explained that Noah was a douchebag that intentionally lied about the Ark departure time.
I have been resisting that article all day. Mostly because, I have spoken to enough crazy people with crazy thoughts this week. Is it something that can be enjoyed with a drinking game on Tequilamas?
Vermillion:
"That doesn't sound like God!"
"God hates freaks"
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