On Thu, 10 Apr 2008, Delirium wrote:
It isn't so much eventualism that causes us to reject these "improvements" based on original research, though, as actually a distrust that the original research is correct. While we phrase it as "that's a nice discovery, but please submit to a classics journal first", what we really mean at least 19 times out of 20 is, "your alleged 'discovery' is actually bunk, but don't take it from us; if you really think it's a discovery, go submit to a classics journal and let it get ripped to shreds in peer review".
This fails for BLPs, and it fails for the cases commonly quoted (including the example where the anon.penet.fi server had to deny the Scientology accusation of child porn).
The reason it fails is that if the newspaper or other source refuses to print a quotable correction, it's probably not because the correction fails peer review. Rather, it's because the source refuses to print corrections of any sort unless their legal or public relations department tells them to. They don't actually care about accuracy or about ruining someone's reputation.
It also doesn't work very well for the covered bridge example. Do you honestly think the difficulty of publishing a newspaper article claiming that a bridge has traffic really has anything to do with the claim not surviving peer review, as opposed to the difficulty of getting even true information about a random bit of trivia published?