Botoxin wrote:Ongoing discussion at:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Eric_Lerner
It seems that the IEEE
Transactions on Plasma Science is a worthless unreliable source:
- Doubt on whether the journal is really peer reviewed.[1] It is.
- An obscure journal.[2]. But not to the 3000 professional engineers and scientist who are members of the IEEE Nuclear and Plasma Sciences Society.[3 (PDF)], and the 360,000 members in 175 countries of the IEEE.
- "A joke of a journal publishing rubbish"[4] (the quality of the argument doesn't get any better)
- "IEEE Plasma Transactions is a low-impact factor journal"[5]. Actually, Between 2000-2004, the journal was ranked No.10 for impact factor in "Physics - Fluids & Plasmas" by Thomson
- "It is not a cosmological journal"[6] And this is intended as a criticism; papers on astrophysical plasmas aren't good enough for a journal on plasmas, and should be judged only by cosmologists?
And the main critic is none other than ScienceApologist (AKA Joshua Schroeder [
7]), who once pretended to be professor when he was a college instructor,[
7], and
is now a grad student at Columbia University.
Thanks, Botoxin, for bringing this interesting discussion to my attention. I've spent the past couple of days doing a lot more reading of Wiki editorial discussions then I ever thought possible.
You should be relieved to learn that Wikipedia has decided that IEEE Transactions on Plasma Science (TPS) is in fact a "Reliable Source" (RS) under Wiki policy, or guidelines, or whatever it is they use to determine these things. Here's the resolution:
Thanks for the clarification. I think the conclusion on this noticeboard must be that both are peer-reviewed academic journals and therefore RS. You will need to discuss on the talk page of the relevant article(s) whether they are being used appropriately and whether due weight is being given. Itsmejudith (talk) 18:17, 6 April 2008 (UTC)
No, the conclusion of this noticeboard is that just because a paper is in a peer-reviewed journal doesn't mean that it is necessarily a reliable source. Thanks for playing. ScienceApologist (talk) 22:35, 9 April 2008 (UTC)
You can read the entire discussion that SA started on IEEE TPS' reliability at the following link, just scroll down about two-thirds of the way to the heading "Low impact journals used to POV-push":
Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Noticeboard
As you can see, naturally, SA couldn't resist the opportunity to rewrite the conclusion in his own style. Then he tagged the issue resolved, and later archived the discussion. I had to resurrect it on the history page.
Apparently, SA was using the argument that IEEE TPS has a "low impact factor" and, therefore, it was an unreliable source. SA has been working very hard on the
"Tired Light" Wiki page to keep Paul Marmet's non-Doppler cosmological redshift theory out of that page. Paul Marmet and Eric Lerner seem to bother SA a lot, and he works very hard to keep the public from learning too much about them on Wiki pages. As far as SA is concerned they are dangerous cranks in the scientific community that must be hidden from the public.
It was probably NOT his intention, however, SA DID manage to settle one question about Paul Marmet's non-doppler redshift theory for me: there has been NO scientific critique, much less any test, of Paul Marmet's theory. I had suspected as much when I first read Marmet's theory last year. I tried to find some peer reviewed critique of this theory, but could find NONE. I thought it strange, since Marmet was a professor of physics and a peer reviewed and published author; but for some reason, Marmet's colleagues just ignored this theory, with one notable exception. Dr. Halton Arp did not agree with Marmet's theory, however, he did suggest a method for testing it.
The only critiques I could find were on the BAUT forum in the form of posters calling Marmet a crank, and of course SA's name-calling as well. No one claiming to have any kind of scientific training could seem to point out where or how Marmet got either his math or his physics wrong. It's a puzzlement.
I guess I'm just going to have to do my own little critique of Dr. Marmet's theory; I was hoping to avoid that.
Thanks again.
DD