The Top Ten Happenings in Mopologetics, 2016

[_Physics Guy]

Perhaps we might say that a lot of this apologetic scholarship is really scholarship theater. It's not even really trying to be real scholarship, but only trying to look like scholarship to people who don't know any better.

For that matter, it seems to me that a lot of this Mormon apologetics is really only apologetics theater. It's not even really trying to convince non-Mormons, but only trying to look, to Mormons, like something that should convince non-Mormons.

[_Gadianton]

Perhaps we might say that a lot of this apologetic scholarship is really scholarship theater. It's not even really trying to be real scholarship, but only trying to look like scholarship to people who don't know any better.

For that matter, it seems to me that a lot of this Mormon apologetics is really only apologetics theater. It's not even really trying to convince non-Mormons, but only trying to look, to Mormons, like something that should convince non-Mormons.

You're on a roll....

[_grindael]

When Mike M. and I submitted our recent article to John Whitmer, the editor wrote us to tell us it was accepted for publication and included ANONYMOUS reviews. They were favorable, but included some items that they thought would improve the article and the editor agreed. We were then asked to edit our own article, they had nothing to do with it. And the suggestions were not specific, they were very general at what they proposed, like they were hinting at what they thought would add more depth to it. I had to really dig around to figure out what they were talking about, but when I finally understood, I saw the benefit in what they had suggested. I found the whole process fascinating, helpful and very laid back. (This was MY first time submitting to a historical Journal).

There was no back and forth between us and them, only with the Editor of the JWHJ, and that was his initial comments and then the revision and his acceptance of it. We were not pressured about anything. Mike has been through the process many times (he's actually on the Editorial Board) and told me that we really didn't need to make the suggested changes or clarifications, and that he had submitted articles and had them accepted without doing so throughout his writing career, but I thought them very good suggestions so we incorporated them into the article.

We submitted a slight revision with some included material suggested by one of the anonymous reviewers and the editor and they then gave it to another editor who made a few changes (of the ending few paragraphs) for clarification and they then sent it back to us to review. We liked it and ok'd it. That was the process we just went through. I do not know who the original reviewers were. But they were very good, and insightful comments. I do know who made the final edits (which were very minor), and I was grateful that it was this person, because I highly respect her work.

[_Physics Guy]

Hmm. Maybe it's worth thinking a bit more about this. I've read and written quite a lot of peer review reports, and in physics at least, it's not necessarily so arm's-length as all that.

Point of jargon: at least in physics, a peer reviewer is a "referee". I've never known who my referees were, though sometimes I've had guesses. As an author, my referees have always known who I was; and I've always known who the authors were that I reviewed. Physics peer reviews are normally only single-blind. I'm not sure myself that this is really good enough, but what everyone says is that it's just too easy to tell, from the paper's content, who the author is. And that's certainly true for experimental papers, because it's rare for the technical capabilities of any two labs to exactly overlap.

Very rarely, a referee will reveal themselves to the authors. At least in some cases this is considered okay—for instance, if the authors and the referee actually know each other, and the referee feels strongly enough about a point that they don't want to just recuse themselves, but they also don't want to talk behind their colleagues' backs.

There is no direct communication between referees and authors. It all goes through the editors, and they reserve the right to edit the responses both ways. The very top journals—Nature and Science—do things a bit differently (you're lucky to get even a single referee report), but otherwise most journals allow one or two back-and-forth rounds of discussion between reviewers and authors. Reviewers may say, "You have to change X to Y." The authors may do that, or they may reply with a counter-proposal and get the reviewers to agree to them saying Z instead of either Y or X. It has even happened to me once or twice that authors revised their papers by inserting whole phrases from my reports. That wasn't what I intended, but they weren't native speakers of English, and when I said something like, "If they really mean X then they should say this more explicitly," they evidently figured that my precise wording of X was simply the only correct way to say that in English. Neither I nor the editors had any problem with this.

In cases where the submitted paper was eventually published, instead of being rejected, my comments as referee never ended up changing more than a couple of paragraphs, out of at least four pages. (Physics papers are mostly quite short.) I've never made major changes in compliance with referee suggestions, either. If larger changes seem to be necessary, the paper is simply rejected—I've recommended rejection many times, and had many of my own papers rejected as well. (It's very hard to get into the top journals, because merely being correct is not good enough for them: your results have to be judged important as well, and that's a subjective call.)

Neither editors nor referees come remotely close to re-writing whole papers for authors. I've never seen any peer review back-and-forth that could be called "coaching". But there usually is a certain amount of back-and-forth.

[_Kishkumen]

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.

What it looks like is co-authorship of some kind. It is nice to have confirmation from Philo that the process Greg Smith described in his account of the Dehlin hit piece was really business as usual. They circulated it to people such as Lou, who would throw in their tweaks, and then embark on yet another stage of the process.