And yet, they do try to reject papers for various issues that at least approximate veracity. No journal will accept a paper proposing a perpetual motion machine. What is that but a veracity check? What is peer review? Glorified spellcheck? No, we expect publishers to at least catch the obvious stuff.
If you design a publisher around the idea that it truly has no responsibility for veracity, then you get... Arxiv. In that scenario traditional publishers truly provide no value.
Yes it is glorified spellcheck. They’re checking your methods. If you claim to have built a perpetual motion machine they almost certainly will not reject your paper on the basis that “perpetual motion machines are impossible,” but on the basis that your methodology [almost certainly] has an error.
"Your methodology probably has an error [because you got the wrong answer]" is not meaningfully different from "we're rejecting your paper because it's false". My point stands.
Ed: your other comment about how publishers used to just be mailing lists is actually kind of funny in how it proves my point. If we wanted publishing to just be a mailing list... we can just have a mailing list. Or use Arxiv. But today's publishers have to at least pretend to do better than that, which they mostly do by supposedly filtering papers on quality, which in turn is, you guessed it, 80% veracity checks (oh, and also increasing the right people's citation counts).
Well yeah when you add stuff I didn’t say, it does sound ridiculous.
I didn’t say they would reject it based on the result and presuming an error. They would find and reject the error (or on the basis of a million far more superficial issues which are actual good targets for reforming scientific publishing).
What did I add that's meaningfully different from what you said, i.e. in terms of outcome?
Ed: ok, I think I get it, you mean they'll somehow identify a specific method error, and if they can't then they'll... Just accept it? I simply don't believe that. I think the journal both should and actually will reject papers that violate the second law of thermodynamics without finding a specific methodological flaw.
If the paper is completely methodologically sound and the only problem is that it violates the second law of thermodynamics, then we need to take another look at the second law of thermodynamics
You're assuming that (a) reviewers not finding any methodology flaws in the paper means there are none, and (b) no flaws in the paper means no flaws in the work. Neither of those are good assumptions. And that's just the generically applicable arguments.
For the Second Law, Arthur Eddington had this to say:
> ...If someone points out to you that your pet theory of the universe is in disagreement with Maxwell's equations - then so much the worse for Maxwell's equations... But if your theory is found to be against the Second Law of Thermodynamics I can give you no hope; there is nothing for it but to collapse in deepest humiliation.
> You're assuming that (a) reviewers not finding any methodology flaws in the paper means there are none, and (b) no flaws in the paper means no flaws in the work
No, you are assuming that with your flawed understanding of what a journal is and what peer review does. Like this isn’t a matter of opinion. Peer review in fact and by design is not a stamp of veracity. The reason is exactly the conundrum you’ve backed into.
If someone produces apparently high-quality science that challenges a well-regarded theory, it is only under your model that paper cannot be published. Under our model (the one currently in use today), the reviewers are expected to try to find holes in the methodology and, if they can’t find them, publish the paper anyway even if they disbelieve the conclusion. That way the broader scientific community can attempt to blow holes in the paper, and they frequently find things the authors and the peer reviewers missed. That is not a shot against the publisher: that is how science must work because of exactly the dynamic you’ve identified.
You're still not paying attention to what I'm saying, which is that journals are expected to catch the easy errors, not make an absolute determination of truth. I said this in my first comment on this thread.
If you design a publisher around the idea that it truly has no responsibility for veracity, then you get... Arxiv. In that scenario traditional publishers truly provide no value.