[WikiEN-l] OT: Peer review gone awry - "The Case of M. S. El Naschie"

[Delirium]

phoebe ayers wrote:
> Of course, what's interesting and troubling for us is that this is a
> respected publisher who apparently did all the normal things in
> setting up an academic journal that is typical of the sort of thing
> Wikipedia is supposed to use as a "reliable source." But (naturally, I
> suppose) the academic publishing process is as open to failure as any
> other publishing or reporting process.* And I can't help but think
> that in a more open process -- an open access journal, say, or even
> Wikipedia -- this would not have gone on for so long or played out in
> the same way.

True, though I think the biggest (and long-standing) problem has 
actually been books, which in many fields (especially in the humanities) 
are both the canonical "reliable source", and hugely problematic as 
sources. Academic presses have a peer-review process, but it isn't 
intended to make sure the book is representative of consensus in the 
field, unbiased, or otherwise a good source for writing an encyclopedia 
article. It's more of a minimal level of reviewing to ensure that the 
author is making a legitimate contribution to the academic debate, not 
plagiarizing anyone, etc.---even if the result is a highly polemical 
book contrary to consensus and accepted by nearly nobody, it may be 
worth publishing as a contribution to the overall discussion, especially 
if the author is already well known.

This is all fine if books are read with full knowledge of their status 
in the field---that they represent the possibly idiosyncratic view of 
one particular writer. But if their claims are then entered into 
Wikipedia articles, with a citation to the book to justify them, that's 
more of a problem. This isn't as rare as people might think either; I'd 
say the *majority* of academic-press books make at least one significant 
claim that is controversial in its field, often without even admitting 
that the claim is controversial.

-Mark