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Hi guys,
Hold the presses.
I am interrupting my program on Hamza and his pamphlet on the Koran and the Easter eggs
you might find therein, to address an issue, which I thought everyone was aware of.
A person who seems to be one of Hamza's fan-boys has made a comment on my video, informing
me that there are scholarly, peer-reviewed articles in scientific journals proving that
the Koran is really, really correct and all my doubts and facts to the contrary are probably
just made up.
If you look for this paper it really does resemble a scientific journal publication.
Yet if you read this paper you can't help but smile. It's the same, 20-year-old nonsense,
complete with the angel and the really stupid pregnancy timing parameters from the hadiths.
You good old Dr. Keith Moore as well as all the old lies about nobody knew what is described
there and that it was Muhammad's cousin who informed him about the mingled fluids. Who
is right when it comes to these contradictions? Does that mean Hamza's information is wrong
because it is not published by this organization?
How does this idiotic and fabricated stuff end up in a peer-reviewed scientific journal
anyway?
The answer is: it doesn't.
If you look at the start page and look for the editor you can't find one. Looking at
the list of journals, you find so many of them, it's incredible. Scrolling down you
notice that they span different fields and have really obscure names. If you then decide
to select one, say on Chemical Engineering and look what it contains you find only some
announcement of some conferences. Go to the archive and select, say, 2010. According to
this there is only one single entry here in the entire year of 2010. It turns out there
were 2 papers within that month. But not more for an entire year.
Now, I am NOT saying these 2 papers are bogus, but they are not peer-reviewed and have not
passed any process of evaluation.
How can I say this? Well, let's first look at what the instructions for a normal scientific
journal are.
We have pages and pages of definitions and accurate specifications. Everything is described,
including the name of the responsible person complete with address, should you have questions.
The review process is amply defined.
Now for the one on academicjournals.org. The instructions for the paper submission are
very sparse indeed. The peer review is dealt with in 4 sentences and 8 weeks, but the important
part comes at the bottom: a price.
In other words: you pay money and in return you can publish any nonsense you want.
We've already seen one example of what can be bought from this website: a label. The
label: peer-reviewed. It's a label, nothing more. Another example shows how ludicrous
this can get, if the peer-review function is eliminated. A hole in the roof is taken
as experiment to visualize dark matter. Where - in the summary - the author then admits
that dark matter does require real experiments.
In another example the Islamic Koran is taken as example for a management style based on
the vague and ambiguous words in the Koran and the hadiths.
What do real scientists comment? They are outraged and call it a scam. Is this justified,
given that the owners sit in - of all places - Nigeria?
I found several examples of academics who were contacted and asked to review a paper
for free which was nowhere near their field of expertise. They were asked to simply submit
their name and send it back, not knowing that they were risking their reputation and enabling
the owner of this site a hefty piece of income.
There are several people out there who have picked this up and are actively campaigning
against this dishonest tactic and publishing lists of dubious journals. Right at the top
of all of them is the one quoted by the Hamza fan-boy, who never checked and accepted this
*** blindly and gladly.
If you look at the reviewers you can have endless fun.
Looking at a journal on law, you find the editor is a Professor Christiena Maria van
der Bank. Except for the first name, a normal South African name. If you look for that person,
you find that this name does not exist in any Google page. Shortening it puts you on
the right track and you find that Professor van der Bank at the Vaal University is actually
the dean - of human sciences. Why would she edit and peer review a law paper? Does she
even have a LLB? Nope.
I now turned to the "journal" on evolution and hardly found anything in there. Looking
ate the instructions for authors I again found the very short peer review description and
that the author relinquishes all rights to his paper. What was a real shock though, was
who was reviewing the papers.
What a real journal provides is the name and credentials of the people who are reviewing
a paper, to ensure a transparent process and the proper qualifications.
Which is doubtful, if you have a Jasminka Ilich-Ernst, who is actually Hazel Stiebeling,
or a Bob Moffatt, who is actually Georgia Alice Stamford. You start wondering what Universe
you are in.
Mr. Su might be a fine engineer, but what exactly qualifies him to review a paper on
evolution. And Dr. Krishnan can handle atomic energy, Dr. Stelian a brilliant analyst, Dr.
Khan a a whizz-kid at the lathe, Dr. Uddin a compassionate social worker, Dr. Singh a
fundie on mapping, Dr. Girgis without a department, Dr. Maingi a great tourist guide and not to
forget Dr. Zhang who is an expert when it comes to coffee - but is any one of them qualified,
capable and able to review a scientific paper on evolutionary biology?
Academicjournals.org seems to think so.
This is a list of pointers what to look for when assessing the validity of a paper. We
see that whatever comes out these title label factories can be spotted - but you need to
want to.
And yes, please don't let anything stop you from being just a bit skeptical and using
both braincells, what Hamza's fan-boys seem to be incapable of.
Thanks for your time.