The Top Ten Happenings in Mopologetics, 2016

[_Lemmie]

He implied that he should be trusted that his organization evaluated everything with the highest standards possible and therefore their process was better than peer review.

Then shouldn't that be more properly called, "editorial review?"

I would think so. It's only DCP who thinks he and he alone should be above the standards in place for the entire rest of the world. Including BYU, according to Hamblin, who says he was advised to NOT publish with journals like the Interpreter if he wanted to advance his career.

[_Doctor CamNC4Me]

And yet, they used the term "peer reviewed" often. The insinuation was that it was treated to rigorous scholarly standards, but instead one Mormon would read the material, make suggestions, and then bless off on it... Thus it had been 'reviewed'.

- Doc

[_Philo Sofee]

Gadianton:

I will admit the Interpretor is a success if any author prior to this post can reasonably prove their article could have been published in a peer reviewed journal but instead, the author chose Interpretor.

Philo said:

An excellent challenge, however, an apologist would simply note that it is peer reviewed, by its own inside peers. That was how FARMS materials were done. It was all inside job when I published the two articles I did with the review. John Gee was the one who peer reviewed my stuff on Egyptology, and we ended up corresponding about it. They change the meaning of peer review in the same manner they change the term "translation" to insure Joseph Smith comes out of the dog fight of the Book of Abraham unscathed. Once you change the concept, wala! You can then claim it works just like in academia. It's their modus operandi.

Dr. Scratch said:

Whoa, whoa, whoa. Let me make sure I understand what you're saying. Are you saying that John Gee CORRESPONDED with you while the review was in progress??? The very fact that you knew outright that the reviewer was Gee shows just how far they have departed from normal peer review. (Does the term "double-blind" mean anything to them?) But if he was sort of "coaching" you while the review was ongoing.... That is *incredibly* damning in terms of the authenticity of their process.

That is exactly what happened. I was coached and told which sources were valid and what was wrong with others. He disagreed with some of my stuff but I insisted on putting it in, it was after all, MY review - Lol! Yeah there was no double blind review of any kind with my stuff I did with Russell McGregor. Some of the stuff he didn't like and I said I had researched so it's part of my ideas. And so on. He really disliked the mystical stuff I was going to include. So I didn't.

[_Philo Sofee]

Philo,

I totally agree but my challenge stands. As I remember it, value is defined by opportunity cost -- the best forgone alternative. In other words, the mopoligists can define themselves into godhood, but they need to find another institution that claims peer review that would have published their blog post to meet my challenge.

I highly doubt they will cite another vanity press that claims peer review, and I can explain that later.

Absolutely it does. The thing is, there is simply no outside authority to hold anyone at BYU or the old FARMS to the actual standard of peer review. It appears to me to be simple inbreeding scholarship. If a fellow Mormon scholar likes what you write he/she says so and possibly makes a suggestion or another parallel or whatever. This is clearly sub standard scholarly reviewing going on. So I second your motion and just wanted to say so out loud.

[Guest]

Thanks for clarifying, Philo. I mean, to be totally honest, I have always pretty much assumed that they didn't use legitimate "peer review," but to have it confirmed by an actual eye witness is important. This is huge, really. Had I known about this, it would have made the Top 3 of this year's list. This deserves its own thread.

[_Philo Sofee]

Thanks for clarifying, Philo. I mean, to be totally honest, I have always pretty much assumed that they didn't use legitimate "peer review," but to have it confirmed by an actual eye witness is important. This is huge, really. Had I known about this, it would have made the Top 3 of this year's list. This deserves it's own thread.

Wow. I would have been honored. Let me check, but I may actually still have the correspondence. Don't get too excited yet, it might take me a while to find if I kept it at all. I have just come to realize that everything about apologetics is just farcical. It's all fart in the wind.

[_Doctor Scratch]

Thanks for clarifying, Philo. I mean, to be totally honest, I have always pretty much assumed that they didn't use legitimate "peer review," but to have it confirmed by an actual eye witness is important. This is huge, really. Had I known about this, it would have made the Top 3 of this year's list. This deserves it's own thread.

Wow. I would have been honored. Let me check, but I may actually still have the correspondence. Don't get too excited yet, it might take me a while to find if I kept it at all. I have just come to realize that everything about apologetics is just farcical. It's all fart in the wind.

Oh, I will definitely be standing by--the gifts just keep on coming! I think that this is as big of a revelation as the 2nd Watson Letter, or the fact that apologists get paid. If Mopologetics weren't dead, this would be a pretty solid body blow to them.

[_Philo Sofee]

I just honestly had no idea of the implications. I wasn't in on the argument about the peer review process while I was TBM. I was just contributing my "scholarship" and "testimony" attempting to build the Kingdom of God. GAWD, the naïvété!!!!! It is just at times so damn embarrassing.

[_Physics Guy]

Peer review is always easy—for certain values of "peer". The peers of crackpot researchers are other crackpot researchers, and if they review each other's work, then that's peer review. Simply getting peers to review things is no magic bullet. I mean, how could it be? Peers are by definition just the same kind of people as the person they're reviewing.

What makes peer review useful in science is that the peers are a community of people who are trained and experienced in an actual rigorous discipline, in which a body of basic truth has been established, using a toolbox of proven methods. The methods of today may turn out tomorrow to have unsuspected limitations, and so may today's truths, but the facts that have really been found will not just go away. Peer review provides an essential reality check, because we have at least some handle on reality.

If we're talking about a discipline that doesn't have that, then no amount of peer review is going to help very much. On the other hand, though, a research community that actually does have a base of real shared knowledge is bound to implement peer review in some form, just to save readers' time. So just because a journal has real peer review doesn't mean that its articles are worth anything, but if it doesn't have real peer review, then that's kind of a giveaway.

[_Doctor CamNC4Me]

The thing with Mopologists is they want the scholarly veneer of a peer review, but when it comes to, say, Book of Mormon archaeological studies they claim only Mormons could offer a legitimate peer review because who else could understand the nuance of the Book of Mormon? Archaeology is cast aside for a faithful narrative. But they still call it a peer review because a "peer" reviewed, edited, and published faith promoting material.

- Doc