You shed light on actual problems (as opposed to ’spinning’ insofar as I have been well informed on what I’ve read). Are capable of informing others.
When such references are used, you gamble with that potential.

I think what you do on your site is exceptionally valuable for the general public.
My comment is meant merely as a passing constructive bit of criticism:
You may lose readers that identify with any position that’s thrown under the bus.
Even if it’s just in passing…and the connotations are understood by most of your readers.

This is a tragedy…but only if they were going to be able to learn something.
(And my assumption is that they could.)

[Sorry for posting here...had a problem with the contact link]

The editors of the journals have complete discretion as to whether or not to forward comments from reviewers to authors. The better journals do so. The authors are then expected to reply to specific statements made by reviewers. It is sad to say that authors are not required to respond to specific objections of peers by many prestigious journals. This is why I only rarely review an article or paper. Many “prestigious” journals are shams.

Under these circumstances, peer review means exactly nothing. The only thing a real scientist will accept is evidence via replication of the experiment by another experimenter in another location following exactly the same protocol as the author proposed.

Better yet is a collaborative study performed by several researchers working independently to validate or invalidate the protocols of the author. Only when such a protocol has been validated by experiment by independent scientists working in similar but separate laboratories or clinical settings can a protocol whether in medicine,chemistry or any other discipline be accepted by me as being true.

Any scientist worth his/her salt is a skeptic not only of others’ work but their own.

“Conducting any science without peer review is like trying to play a football game with no refs.”

That is just not the historical reality.
Please read the link I posted above. February 15, 2009, 11:37 pm.

This must be the next step for deniers who haven’t succeeded in questioning the science or motives. If you are going to spout nonsense and still want to be taken seriously, the first thing you must do is abolish any accepted standards, so peer review has got to go.

The point is, that (Nature and Science aside) if it is so easy to get sloppy science past peer review, where are all the articles from climate change skeptics in the peer review system? If the science from the climate change advocates is so bad there should be lots of refuting articles (even bad ones!) that get past peer review. I don’t see too many. So you then have to fall back on the tired old conspiracy theories that somehow all climatologists are in the pay of the System and are trying to protect their Jobs. Sigh.

I urge you climate change skeptics – don’t just write about it on blogs – publish your analyses in the journals! Sloppy peer review will then be working for you, not against you. I guarantee that it will be good for the soul! When you get them published you can post the reprints with that lovely stamp of authority.

Out of curiosity, find out how many peer review papers CDC has produced (or refers to) to counter Wakefield’s suggestion relative to autism.
http://www.cdc.gov/ncbddd/autism/faq_vaccines.htm#whatresearch
http://www.cdc.gov/ncbddd/autism/documents/vaccine_studies.pdf
In this pdf, I counted 4 published. Autism epidemic since early 90’s, and only few PeRe studies????? 15 years later??? Starting from 2002???? They won’t move until you kick them! I personally find half of those studies irrelevant. What can you say about a study that compares vaccination ages of kids with and without autism. It’s the same, duh! They all follow the same childhood immunization schedule. How about a study of autism in Denmark (which btw has significantly lower autism rates than US)! It is akin to “I lost it there, but I will look for it here, because it is lighter here.”

I would like to note that Dr. Wakefield, in fact, is doing similar thing as you, i.e. challenging particular dogma that is currently enjoying political support, but which is also blatantly incorrect, incomplete and biased!

Thank you for your blog!

P.S. Anyone familiar with the story of Dr. Arpad Puzstai on the subject of GMO’s! It was also called “faulted” for a while (Times participated), it cost him his job and career! But he was proven right after all!