Comments on: Worst. Journal. Ever.

By: Coturnix

Coturnix — Fri, 22 Jan 2010 05:07:35 +0000

Medical Hypotheses is a never-ending source of material for fun blogging! Using bad examples to describe how science is really done works well in this medium and MH is a veritable fount of great examples to pick from.

By: ztrewq

ztrewq — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 09:30:20 +0000

Well, the journal most obviously is not on a very high level, but I disagree that you should condemn it on principle. A journal that collects all those weird, off-the-road, completely-bananas hypotheses is not necessarily a bad thing: as long as you keep in mind what it is. I think that a journal that specifically publishes hypotheses that are not (yet) tested and that do not fit a given paradigm is not harmful, but actually useful. And as long as you keep a reasonable level.
What is that, “reasonable level”? Well, first of all, given a hypothesis X, the authors must argue that there is no direct, observational evidence contradicting X (and if there is, they must argue why it should be dismissed); next, they should confront X with a paradigm; show that X is falsifiable; propose a method of testing (even if it is not doable at a given time), and, last but not least, show why it would be interesting / important if their reasoning was true.
Do you remember this Donald Williamson paper from PNAS on the origin of insect larvae, that has been submitted to PNAS via Lynn Margulis? Well, this is a counter-example: this could have been dismissed after ten minutes comparison of available data. But I do think that in general, such ideas are worth publishing in a journal that is specifically made for them.
I think there should be a soap box like that, one that is more rigorous and formal then blogs or other forms of communication. Incidentally, that would maybe take care of physicists having another “great idea” that explain whole biology (or vice versa).

By: Psi Wavefunction

Psi Wavefunction — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 07:05:23 +0000

Awww, but some of their papers there were so entertaining =P
(eg. http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/discoblog/category/ncbi-rofl/charlton-week/)

About time people learn not to believe everything in print. I mean, why not just put a big disclaimer somewhere obvious that the contents are all speculative (as I imagine “Hypotheses” would imply…), and just leave it? Anyone who’s dumb enough to read it uncritically would be misled by everything else that’s ever been published anyway; the information filtering should come from within, not without. Nature publishes some speculative crap too, it’s just concealed a little better in some cases…

I just think it’s rather pointless to play whack-a-mole with questionable information/ideas/articles. Besides, who has the right to judge anyway? Only each individual for themselves…

PS: Sum of 1+8 is 9, right? Why the hell is it telling me I’m entering in the wrong sum? Or do I totally fail math these days, even worse than the average biologist?

By: Keith Grimaldi

Keith Grimaldi — Wed, 20 Jan 2010 15:56:10 +0000

I hope it goes, it would be good riddance, some of the most terrible (and sometimes probably harmful) papers have been published in this journal