In January 1861 John Tyndall, a physicist at London's Royal Institution, submitted a paper to the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London. The paper bore the title "On the absorption and radiation of heat by gases and vapours, and on the physical connexion of radiation, absorption, and conduction." After testing the heat-retaining properties of several gases, Tyndall had concluded that some were capable of trapping heat, and thus he became one of the first physicists to recognize and describe that basis for the greenhouse effect. A month after its submission, the paper was read aloud at a meeting of the society, and several months after that, a revised version of the paper was in print.
That path from submission to revision and publication will sound familiar to modern scientists. However, Tyndall's experience with the Philosophical Transactions—in particular, with its refereeing system—was quite different from what authors experience today. Tracing "On the absorption and radiation of heat" through the Royal Society's editorial process highlights how one of the world's most established refereeing systems worked in the 1860s. Rather than relying on anonymous referee reports to improve their papers, authors engaged in extensive personal exchanges with their reviewers. Such a collegial approach gradually lost favor but recently has undergone something of a resurgence.
https://physicstoday.scitation.org/do/10.1063/PT.5.9098/full/
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 22 2021, @02:21PM (1 child)
"Welcome to SoylentNews"!
(Score: 2) by Eratosthenes on Wednesday June 23 2021, @02:20AM
Maybe if we had some form of peer-review here on SoylentNews, where you could get modded down a bit before putting your comment out there in front of God and everybody, . . .
(Score: 0, Interesting) by js290 on Tuesday June 22 2021, @02:29PM (18 children)
How do I provide peer review on Researchers.One? [researchers.one]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 22 2021, @03:00PM (8 children)
What's that about, the closed system (bell jar) model?
(Score: 1) by js290 on Tuesday June 22 2021, @03:38PM (7 children)
Observation (atmospheric gases, climate) vs Concept (greenhouse, closed system, change/constant)... off base concepts... make mgmt decisions in wrong direction [bit.ly]
(Score: 5, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 22 2021, @03:55PM (1 child)
A whacko idiot that failed partial differential equations class as an undergraduate? That's the only way to believe bullshit like that. Or is he seems to be arguing about semantics of *trap heat* without realizing that it simply means that when you add CO2, the atmosphere gets WARMER? No, he can't be that stupid. Greenhouse 'traps' heat, no? But it's also open - how could that be!!!!???
mean path of IR is greatly increased by CO2, hence the 'trapping'. Like light in the sun is 'trapped' for a million years. But your "expert" would say, no, it is NOT trapped! It's an illusion! The sun is shinning in pure gamma from the core and it's not hot at all! You and him sound like need to do some homework... wait, can you even understand basic homework like this?
http://www.astro.wisc.edu/~townsend/resource/teaching/astro-310-F11/solutions-2011-10-28.pdf [wisc.edu]
js290, please, stop posting from your weirdo echo chamber here.
(Score: 0, Offtopic) by js290 on Tuesday June 22 2021, @05:00PM
Cute... homework problems... where the solutions are already known... In school, you're given the lesson first, then the test. But, in life, you're given the test, then you learn your lesson..." [youtu.be]
Was having another discussion just the other day about solving DEs vs the implications of what DEs tell us about Nature. The best engineer I studied with reminded me many years ago, "coupled systems cannot be magically decoupled..."
(Score: 2) by captain normal on Tuesday June 22 2021, @07:26PM (1 child)
Humm....not a closed system? I suppose if one only considers valid only the extent of what one can observer at any moment, one might think that a much larger system is not enclosed. The reality is that on this less than 27000 mile circumference ball of rock the atmosphere is only about 6 miles thick. If the planet were the size of a soccer ball the thickness of the atmosphere would be ~0.00075 inch. Seems like a pretty enclosed system to me.
Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not to his own facts"- --Daniel Patrick Moynihan--
(Score: 1) by js290 on Friday June 25 2021, @03:14PM
which part of your rambling statement is the observation (27000 mile circumference) and which part is your concept (soccer ball, ~0.00075in atmosphere)?
Observation vs Concept... off base concepts... make mgmt decisions in wrong direction [bit.ly]
(Score: 5, Insightful) by PartTimeZombie on Tuesday June 22 2021, @11:10PM
Oh right, that guy who makes sure everyone knows he has a PHD even though it is in Forest Ecology, not any Climate science.
Then he posted fake research under a fake name. [washingtonpost.com]
And he has also decided to go full anti-vaxx.
Let's listen to the lying liar, shall we?
(Score: 2) by Mykl on Thursday June 24 2021, @07:01AM (1 child)
If you think that glasshouses are airtight (i.e. closed systems) then you are even dumber than I thought.
(Score: 1) by js290 on Friday June 25 2021, @03:22PM
if "greenhouse gases trap heat", why isn't there technology that uses this concept for insulating purposes? Since you're the smart one, do you know if the Ideal gas law takes gas composition into account?
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 22 2021, @03:08PM (4 children)
Please stop linking to some discredited weirdo on Twitter.
(Score: 1, Touché) by js290 on Tuesday June 22 2021, @03:22PM (3 children)
Discredited by whom: Mother Nature, pal review, or "weirdo" ACs?
(Score: 0, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 22 2021, @03:31PM
Himself. But Reality would also work.
https://twitter.com/NikolovScience/status/1407178983326633992 [twitter.com]
(Score: 5, Insightful) by janrinok on Tuesday June 22 2021, @04:23PM (1 child)
I suspect that if we wanted to read Twitter, we would go to read Twitter. Can you please extract the information you are linking to and quote it here (with a supporting link), and not just provide a link to Twitter. This is a discussion site not a method of increasing Twitter's daily hit rate.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 23 2021, @03:27PM
the nerve of twitter, using soylentnews to increase their traffic like this!
(sorry, I couldn't resist).
in any case, people don't read twitter. people enrich their minds by sucking on the tit of ... hang on. birds tweet. birds don't breastfeed, they regurgitate.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by khallow on Tuesday June 22 2021, @03:17PM (3 children)
No, that's wrong. The one dimensional radiative model remains important because it's a simple model that describes the basic phenomenon of global warming. That the real world version is more complex doesn't matter.
To discount a model because it's not perfect is to ignore the point of the model. Here, it's particular bad since that ancient model actually does a good job of predicting present day levels of warming from greenhouse gases.
(Score: 0, Troll) by js290 on Tuesday June 22 2021, @05:33PM (2 children)
Correlation is not correlation... [youtu.be] What is the correct rate of warming or cooling?
Observation ("gases") vs Concept ("greenhouse")... off base concepts... make mgmt decisions in wrong direction ("predicting present day levels of warming") [bit.ly]
This may be a more reliable observation: "Every culture that has depended on annual plants for their staple food crops has collapsed." [bit.ly]
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday June 22 2021, @09:51PM (1 child)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 23 2021, @12:34AM
Please rephrase your comment in the form of a pithy quote for twitter.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday June 22 2021, @02:41PM
On the modern publication track, nobody knows you are a dog.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 22 2021, @03:13PM (2 children)
there was no peer review in the 1860s, as we understand it now: there was no barrier to publication, other than some ad-hoc criteria (mild endorsements by established scientists, or being enrolled in/having graduated some relevant institution).
in fact, as late as 1936 Einstein was surprised by the idea of a review before publication, see for instance this account of the incident: https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/blog/2005/09/16/einstein-vs-physical-review/ [preposterousuniverse.com]
however, presentations before audiences are currently routine, both pre and post publication. And questions from such audiences routinely lead to alterations of papers, or new papers. well... before covid restrictions.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 22 2021, @03:34PM
Indeed you are correct. The difference was that your publications tended to circulate in "societies" that you belonged to. So in that case, the peer review was acceptance in such a society in the first place.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 23 2021, @12:38AM
The Philosophical Transactions had a sort of peer review. Go watch some of Brady Haran's Objectivity [youtube.com] episodes where they've pulled notes on whether a submission should be permitted to Phil Trans.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 22 2021, @03:23PM (1 child)
Even 20 years ago, the main correspondence was via memberships in specialized communities. You know, like https://www.rasc.ca/ [www.rasc.ca] And even with internet today, this remains to be true.
Regarding papers, you can contact the author and they are more than happy to discuss with you. The problem is that the only authors that get attention are from the alt-right weirdos or the alt-left wingnuts and their comments amount to 'WHAHAHAHA, you ares wrecking the world! and lies!". you know, it's actually like the Free Software we have now. If you are actually an author of anything free and open source, most you can get is bug reports with whining about some missing feature. But actual patch?? Rare. It's like that in the science world. And the weirdos are same type of attention like the weirdos sending CODE_OF_CONDUCT.txt. Their outrage train are just as helpful like the weirdos yammering about how global warning is fake. And then they accuse scientists are not being "collaborative".
If you are actually in the field and are interested to discuss things, you are more than welcome. The real difference is that scientific papers were rather rare 150 years ago. Today, you no longer can read all of them and have to scroll past the uninteresting ones like you do on Twitter. And no longer need mail for manual distribution lists.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 22 2021, @08:08PM
At least they are not bitching and moaning about peer review and replication and the null hypothesis, like Runaway Nikolov is doing. Funny the criticisms come for those with the least experience in intellectual persuits.
(Score: 2) by bzipitidoo on Wednesday June 23 2021, @08:16AM (3 children)
Today, publishers act like submissions are a dime a dozen. Also, reviewers are skittish, and even though anonymous, won't accept things that sound too simple, no matter how profound. If Galileo's experiments of dropping two items of very different mass from a height (he used the Leaning Tower of Pisa) were submitted today, they'd likely reject it for being too easy. Basically, they want the best of the best of the best of the best so much that plenty of perfectly good papers are rejected. Yes, thanks to Publish or Perish, a lot of garbage is dumped on reviewers. Still, the rejection rate is stunning. For the more prestigious, it's over 50%. That's crazy. People who made it all the way through a PhD program, with the high attrition rates such programs typically have, are not suddenly abandoning the scientific rigor they had to practice to earn that high degree, to submit an embarrassment of a paper.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 23 2021, @10:21AM (2 children)
And with jobs for these positions at 5 postdocs to 1 opening or even 20:1 in some fields, yeah, it's much easier and rewarding to just become an electrician instead.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 23 2021, @03:22PM
Today, Europe insists on a 3-4 year PhD program, basically saying that 8-9 years after highschool most people are ready to receive their doctorate.
So there are a lot more PhDs around to compete for the available jobs.
Think of it this way: if the average professor gets a permanent position at 35, there are 30 years to turn out PhD students. So roughly 10 PhDs per professor.
If the number of professors remains constant (ideally it should be proportional to the population size), then it's only natural for each PhD to have a 1 in 10 chance at a professorship.
Separately, the people passionate about science are forced to work on a fast schedule, because they're competing with those who are quick to get mediocre results and good at presenting them. And the profound research that requires many false starts never gets done.
but hey. I'm just bitter because I didn't get a cozy permanent position, so my opinion is biased and irrelevant.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 25 2021, @05:33PM
There are several places to publish papers, if one of the most prestigious rejects your paper, there isn't anything stopping you from submitting to another (presumably less prestigious) publisher.
Peer review is the only thing that keeps the chaff separated from the wheat, is it any wonder that a journal would want to protect its brand by rejecting most of the stuff that is submitted?
Honestly, with the little that these journals add, the rejection rate, and its presumed increase in quality, is about the only thing they have to offer readers.
(Score: 2) by PiMuNu on Wednesday June 23 2021, @03:05PM
Just to be clear, academics don't really care *except* that dumb funding agencies use this stuff to decide who to fund - as some sort of "metric" which is (haha) not open to bias.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 23 2021, @06:11PM (2 children)
Look at this physics teacher
"Please Join Prof. Michel van Biezen along with Duc Van Khanh Tran for the 2021 ASP-Ghana Webinar!"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Bq0YD35hOg&list=PLX2gX-ftPVXWPijUnSqYv6rAp0QhrUyID&index=1 [youtube.com]
(AFAIK, he only has a masters degree unless that's changed recently? Still a brilliant guy, English isn't even his native language and he speaks like three languages).
So someone got peer reviewed in some journal. I don't know who that person is. I don't care. Half of those stupid publications are redundant or worthless anyways and so much of it turns out to be junk science and gets lost.
This guy, he's probably made thousands of videos. I know who this guy is and I'm not even an enthusiast (my educational background are in biology and computers though I've taken a year of physics). I've watched his videos and I know he knows what he's talking about. He knows what he's talking about and he communicates clearly. (I've seen videos of people with electrical engineering degrees talking about electrical engineering that clearly have no clue what they are talking about so I stop watching). The obscure random guy with a Ph.D. that published in some journal that's behind a paywall and I can't even access the publication yet alone find it or know it even exists? Who are they? I don't know and I don't care.
Yeah, gaining a reputation is different now than it used to be.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 24 2021, @01:53AM (1 child)
It's not what you know, nor even if you know what you're talking about, but it is how you deliver it. Why would I want to read some boring science paper with hardly any pictures in it when I can watch my favorite "popularizer" give a TED talk?
The march of Science go ever on, one TED talk at a time!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 24 2021, @09:13AM
Have you watched this guy's videos. He's not TED Talk, he teachers the subject. There is a difference.