Steve Bennett wrote:
On 3/22/06, SJ <2.718281828(a)gmail.com> wrote:
* Rearranging, reediting, and excerpting
Britannica articles. Several
of the "articles" Nature sent its outside reviewers were only sections of,
or excerpts from Britannica entries. Some were cut and pasted together from
more than one Britannica article. As a result, Britannica's coverage of
certain subjects was represented in the study by texts that our editors
never created, approved or even saw.
That seems like a lot of hot air over a small issue. Claiming that
their editors "never created, approved or even saw" the particular
compilation is really piling on strong words to make an impact.
Whereas what they're actually denying is much weaker. Kind of like "I
did *not* have sexual relations with that woman..."
Sexual relations between WP and Dame Britannica?? What would the
children look like? :-)
Whatever may
have prompted Nature to do such careless and sloppy research,
it's now time for them to uphold their commitment to good science and
retract the study immediately. We have urged them strongly to do so.
Uh, a commitment to good science would be publishing the data and
their method so that people can attempt to reproduce it. I tend to
agree that Nature's method was optimistic. Surely more than one
reviewer for each article shoul have been appointed...even better
would have been an open forum where many experts could pick through
each article and argue amongst themselves.
Yes, but peer review has its problems, and that whole process may need
to become more wiki-like.
We have
prepared a detailed report that describes Britannica's thorough
(7,000 words) analysis of the Nature study. I invite you to download it from
our Web site at
www.eb.com.
A lot of it seems to be "We reject this criticism. We have asked our
adviser, and he says we're right." Not exactly convincing stuff.
Particularly when they complain that the original study failed to cite
sources - and with few exceptions, the EB rebuttal doesn't either.
Example: "Britannica response: We do not accept these criticisms
(which are really just one criticism, not two). We have published a
revision of this article that retains the emphasis on supersaturation
rather than the transitional stage of saturation."
I didn't read their response in great detail, but did anyone find even a
single criticism that EB accepted
I also sort of feel that as an attempted model of good
science or
whatever, EB should not be attacking the entire Nature study as
totally "without merit".
I think EB is in deep trouble, and the result is likely to be the
eventual collapse of this 18th cetury institution. That's sad.
Ec