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Dr. Shades wrote:To your knowledge, was there any alteration to the paper between when it was delivered at FAIR vs. when it was published in the FARMS Review?

I'm just wondering if he incorporated any of your corrections or just let the falsehoods stand.

Daniel Peterson wrote:Here's the basic process for the FARMS Review, which is not the process for FARMS as a whole:

Every manuscript that is submitted is carefully read and commented upon (and either approved or rejected) by me (Ph.D. in Near Eastern Languages and Cultures, UCLA), my two associate editors (Ph.D. in political philosophy, Brown; doctoral work in political science, Columbia), the Review's production editor (Ph.D. in family sciences, BYU), and the FARMS/Maxwell Institute publication director (M.A. in ancient Near Eastern studies, BYU). Manuscripts are always offered for reading (and comment and possible rejection) to other members of the FARMS/Maxwell Institute leadership as well, which includes people trained in religious studies at UC Santa Barbara, in Hebrew Bible at Harvard, etc. Not uncommonly, when special expertise is required (for example, on matters of genetics), we send manuscripts out to people possessing the required expertise. Every manuscript is subjected to meticulous source checking by student employees.

This is not peer review as it is practiced for, say, the main articles section of the Journal of the American Oriental Society or Analysis. (The rest of FARMS follows conventional peer review.) But the FARMS Review is, first and foremost and by design, a collection of review essays, and so its review procedures are properly compared to those involved with book reviews elsewhere. (Moreoever, you're correct that I, at least, see the FARMS Review as something of an opinion journal.) To put it in perspective: I've written several academic book reviews for non-LDS journals. To the best of my knowledge, none of them has been subjected to peer evaluation (or even to multiple readings by editors) at all. My only contact has been with the relevant book review editor, and not even with the overall editor of the journal. Reviews published in the FARMS Review undergo a much more rigorous evaluation process than I've experienced with book reviews published, for instance, in Al-Masaq, the Religious Studies Review, al-‘Arabiyya, the Review of Religious Research, The Medieval Review, the Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, or The International Journal of Middle East Studies.

The Dude wrote:So he agrees with me that FARMS review is essentially an opinion journal.

Plutarch wrote:FARMS indeed goes through peer reviewing, but it doesn't hold itself out as a scientific or historial journal. Nor does the Evangelical Review or the Catholic publications which often provide articles on science and history. But, their peer review is just as rigorous, I am sure, as the professional journals I have published in.

coffeecat wrote:Okay now who is this Plutarch???

And why was his paper not subject to peer review/I know all about peer review.

Does anyone remember Stephen Glass??

He wrote for the New Republican and almost all of his stories made it through the fact checking phase and they were published as fact when in fact they were pure fiction.
Stephen Glass simply wanted the money and the fame so he wrote lies, when in fact the truth is often more interesting than lies and the truth will always always stand up to any one's challenge, because it can be verified.

So what is the diference between peer review and fact checking/or fact verifying???