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Comment Re:Anonymous public peer review (Score 3, Insightful) 167

Sorry, but I won't hesitate to openly criticize a bigwig if I believe I have the basis to do so. I won't sell my integrity for a tenured position. But I will not do it on A platform like PubPeer.

Not sure if to "wash dirty linen" exactly convey what I meant, but regardless I did not suggest this was the case or that is done. I said it is an open door to such action. As I am not a user of the PubPeer platform, I cannot judge if comments meant to attack the reputation of an other due to private disputes commonly occur. Furthermore, such attacks with other motive as pure improvement of scientific publication quality are difficult to spot, because this is what anonymous commenting enables to do.

Tenure track are extremely competitive, especially in fields like biomedical research. Knowing the human nature and with some of the dirty stuff I saw in my career, I can't imaging nobody would abuse this system to wrongfully block someone's progress at some point.

Comment Re:His articles on PubPeer (Score 4, Interesting) 167

Even if some comments are clearly justified, from many comments one can discern a pattern of an active campaign against the other. For example, one commenter posts :

This brings the total number of paper with problems for Dr. Sarkar, at Wayne State Unversity, to what? 50, 60 papers commented on PubPeer??!!

Most of the image reviews have also been made by the same person, indicating an active campaign against the author.

As well as this may be justified, this is not the proper way to address critical review of already published papers. Assuming that the issues are that important (I can't judge as it is quite far from my field of expertise), letters should be sent to the editors highlighting the issues. Also, review or comment paper could be submitted to the journals.

Comment Re:Anonymous public peer review (Score 1) 167

I'd like to add, that most journals have a post-publishing commenting processes. Open letters, comments and critics may be addressed regarding published articles. Following those errata and replies may be published. This process is, in my opinion, underestimated and under-used.

Also, editors should be contacted if obvious ethical problem should arise with already published articles.

(OT: and sorry for the few typos in the above post.)

Comment Anonymous public peer review (Score 4, Insightful) 167

I have a real problem with the concept of anonymous peer review without editorial oversight or not included in a due peer review process. That said, I do recognize the interest for post-publication peer review due to lacks in the commonly used review processes, although I do not believe this should be allowed to be done anonymously.

Anonymous review is usual in the peer-review processes of most journals, but these comments are in general non-public or at least reviewed by an editor before publication. Some reviewers choose to do their peer-review work without the cover of anonymity and I encourage this. If you have constructive criticism on the work of an other and can this criticism is well founded, you can very well do it openly.

I believe that the best why to process with peer-review is with a two steps process, where first the submitted paper is published in an open discussion paper. Comments from the official reviewers are public and any one can comment on the papers. Following the peer review process, the paper is published in the official paper which may be with or without open access (I prefer those with open access). Such a process encourages quality and brings the whole community in the peer-review process, but under the oversight of editors.

Something like PubPeer is extremely tricky. It's an open door to abuse and for commenter to wash their dirty linen in public. I don't know if such a platform is a good idea, especially with anonymity. I'd rather have a good review of the peer-review processes commonly used.

Comment Re:So-to-speak legal (Score 1) 418

I use a car every they. I guess that makes me a bank robber. You know, could use it as a get away car.

My neighbor also suspect me of murder an cannibalism. He saw me through the kitchen window with a butcher knife and used the BBQ the whole summer. Furthermore, the other neighbors haven't been seen since beginning of the vacation period. All hard evidence...

Seriously, I don't know if you were trying to be funny or sarcastic... but I hope it was either one of those.

Comment Re:This is the guy who decides? (Score 3, Interesting) 200

Forget the tinfoil hat.

Obviously, any email discussing the existence and raising concern about highly classified programs will be also classified as such. Most likely these emails would be removed or redacted to before any review of the email could take place. I am pretty certain emails shouldn't contain highly classified information, hence the people reviewing the emails will most likely not have the security clearance to review highly classified materials. Assuming they are classified as such, not only do they not have to admit of their existence, they are not allowed to admit it.

I am really not a fan on conspiracy theories, nor do I prone propagating them. On the contrary.
Although this might sound like one, for me it feels more like standard procedures and due process that turned out to be quite convenient.

Comment Re:Quite accurately? (Score 1) 171

No I don't get it and you are wrong.

Your example has as nothing to do with accuracy. I'll help you.

According to Oxford :

The degree to which the result of a measurement, calculation, or specification conforms to the correct value or a standard.

In other word, the accuracy of a model results tells you how good it represents the real world. What you (and all others who so kindly replied to my original comment) are referring to is precision.

So, following your example, both model A and B would be inaccurate, but model B would be more precise than model A. Using ISO terminology, model A and B would show a bad trueness, and A would be less precise than B.

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