Re: political farce

sowa <sowa@turing.pacss.binghamton.edu>

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Date: Tue, 21 Dec 93 19:35:08 EST
From: sowa <sowa@turing.pacss.binghamton.edu>
Message-id: <9312220035.AA23612@turing.pacss.binghamton.edu>
To: ginsberg@cs.uoregon.edu, interlingua@ISI.EDU
Subject: Re:  political farce

We have all played both sides of "reviewer's roulette" long enough
to know that anonymity and distinterest is no guarantee of truth,
goodness, quality, or any other virtue.
 
In science, the real "peer review" takes place after publication.
The prepublication exercise is primarily an attempt to weed out the
obviously incompetent papers.  Unfortunately, it also tends to weed
out some good papers that just happen to be out of fashion;
 
The ANSI and ISO standards process is a far more demanding review
that solicits open reviews from all interested parties.  That is
a far more demanding test than anonymous reviews from 3 randomly
selected disinterested parties.
 
John Sowa