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

[Jay Litwyn]

From: "phoebe ayers" <phoebe.wiki at gmail.com>:
(...)
> Sure, and maybe this isn't even a problem per se --  it's the job of
> scholarly discourse to present and discuss new ideas, etc. etc. I am
> thinking more about a failure of scientific publishing as meaning a
> (theoretically) respectable journal published by a (theoretically)
> respectable publisher shouldn't really be an unquestioned soapbox
> for one guy who may or may not be writing patent nonsense.
(...)

If one guy writes patent nonsense in mathematics, then lots of unqualified 
people can figure that out and call to hav his material flushed or his 
appointment questioned. In chaos, it is hard to do that without 
demonstrations or source code. In a journal about chaos, though, the beauty 
of demonstrations might weigh against dismissal of the author. Vetting his 
language might be enough. I remember this author of the FOTD (Fractal of the 
Day) (Jim Muth?). He has a crude manner, in English, of describing his 
method in the lead-up of his articles, and he provides source code, so you 
can figure out what he means. And, if you know the tricks in FRACTINT, then 
you can stuff his execution times into a few seconds, get pretty much the 
same thing, and then go on to play with his equation.