Physics Essays ?
mike.james
Really is a peer reviewed journal that can be trusted (as much as any other
:-)
Its just that some of the titles look a little "odd".
mikej
Pieter Kuiper
"mike.james" <mike....@infomax.demon.co.uk> wrote:
> Could some one tell me if
> http://www.physicsessays.com/
> Really is a peer reviewed journal that can be trusted
It has an ISI impact factor of 0.121 (year 2002), which is very low.
> Its just that some of the titles look a little "odd".
The issue dedicated to Uggo Fano does not look odd at all.
--
"Electrons damage the brain," said Farish. (Donna Tartt)
mike.james
From: "Pieter Kuiper" <Pieter...@msi.vxu.sweden>
> > Its just that some of the titles look a little "odd".
>
> The issue dedicated to Uggo Fano does not look odd at all.
Am I to infer from this that you think that the others do look "odd"?
mikej
Phillip Helbig---remove CLOTHES to reply
In article <c0o0co$4ua$1$8302...@news.demon.co.uk>, "mike.james"
<mike....@infomax.demon.co.uk> writes:
It might be "peer-reviewed", but whether or not that is a guarantee of
quality depends on the quality of the peers. And by definition, peers
of writers of "odd" papers will be "odd" themselves. :-)
It has a reputation of publishing things which one can't get published
elsewhere. I can think of two examples of articles published there
which a) I consider "odd" and b) probably woudln't have been published
in a "serious" journal. Considering that these two articles are the
only two articles from this journal I have read, draw your own
conclusions about whether this is a fair sample.
One was by a relatively well known astronomer who questions the
cosmological interpretation of redshifts, not only in unclear situations
but (in this article) even in connection with well understood phenomena
such as gravitational lensing. The guy does have a "serious" job,
though (or did; he might be retired now). The other was by someone with
an even more serious job (director of a relatively prestigious
institute, but in another field) who published his ideas on a "unified
field theory".
Harry
"Phillip Helbig---remove CLOTHES to reply" <hel...@astro.multiCLOTHESvax.de>
wrote in message news:c108e4$hrh$1...@online.de...
That sounds like a very small but also very telling sample! I remember that
Hubble himself also questioned that interpretation, and he surely wasn't of
low quality. And Einstein also worked towards a unified field theory...
Thus my question:
Is your remark ("probably wouldn't have been published in a "serious"
journal") relevant for the question if the journal "can be trusted"? In
other words, did you find anything in those papers that was clearly wrong?
A "yes" would suggest that that journal can not be "trusted" (publishing
junk).
A "no" would suggest the inverse: that instead "serious" journals can not be
trusted to publish anything that is not mainstream (censorship of science).
Of course, both may be true: I can imagine that the more one allows "odd"
papers, the higher the risk to publish "junk"...
Harald
Neil
"mike.james" <mike....@infomax.demon.co.uk> wrote in message
news:c0o0co$4ua$1$8302...@news.demon.co.uk...
_Physics Essays_ is real and peer reviewed, but is not an ordinary "research"
journal. It's like a more liberal _Foundations of Physics_, or like the now
defunct _Speculations in Science and Technology_. The point is to provide a
forum for authors to speculate about plausible notions or ways to "formulate"
physical problems that are not driven directly by necessity, the most
straightforward current developments, etc. The "essays" part also indicates that
articles may be word-based philosophical studies, of a very general sort, about
physical issues (similar to the now defunct, online _Metaphysical Review_.) You
might find speculations about Mach's principle, or whether space can be *thought
of* as a grid of separate points, or schemes for ordering particles that don't
use the typical parameters, or FTL travel, time-travel paradoxes, tachyon
physics, critiques of relativity, why G or alpha has the value it has, or
examination of whether red shift might be non-Doppler, etc. Of course, there is
a fondness for "paradoxes" and things that don't seem to work out right. The
basic rule is that the argument must sound reasonable, but the results are
pretty much anything goes. I've talked to the Editor, E. Panarella, who thinks
that there should be a forum for such speculation. After all, something like
string theory could start out in such a journal, so readers could start playing
with it before it develops to the point it belongs in Physical Review, etc. PE
published three articles of mine about relativistic dynamics of extended bodies
in 88-89, about issues which I now consider resolved.
Neil Bates
Daryl McCullough
I enjoy reading Physics Essays. Some of the articles are complete bunk
in my opinion. But some are very interesting. Sort of like sci.physics.*
8^)
--
Daryl McCullough
Ithaca, NY
Phillip Helbig---remove CLOTHES to reply
<harald.v...@epfl.ch> writes:
> That sounds like a very small but also very telling sample! I remember that
> Hubble himself also questioned that interpretation, and he surely wasn't of
> low quality. And Einstein also worked towards a unified field theory...
Hubble ended up questioning the cosmological nature of redshifts because
of bad input data. To quote Alan Sandage, who worked with him for many
years: "If Hubble could have applied these (then unknown) corrections to
his data, he could have eliminated his concern that the `correction to
the observed magnigues for the number effect' spoils the interpretation
of the size of the space curvature." The problem with the data was that
"the apparent magnitude scales and zero points of the pre-1950 photometry
fainter than $m_{\textrm{pg}} \sim 17$ are progressively too bright
relative to the Pogson definition of $m = -2.5 \log l + \textrm{const}$".
The reference is the proceedings of the Saas-Fee school on "The Deep
Universe" from 1993.
In other words, there might have been reason to be sceptical then, but
not today.
As for Einstein, when he died, his desk was quite full. He never
claimed to have actually arrived at a successful unified field theory.
> Thus my question:
> Is your remark ("probably wouldn't have been published in a "serious"
> journal") relevant for the question if the journal "can be trusted"? In
> other words, did you find anything in those papers that was clearly wrong?
Yes.
> A "yes" would suggest that that journal can not be "trusted" (publishing
> junk).
> A "no" would suggest the inverse: that instead "serious" journals can not be
> trusted to publish anything that is not mainstream (censorship of science).
>
> Of course, both may be true: I can imagine that the more one allows "odd"
> papers, the higher the risk to publish "junk"...
There is probably some truth to that.
mike.james
"Neil" <para...@lykose.com> wrote in message
news:103ik0s...@corp.supernews.com...
> _Physics Essays_ is real and peer reviewed, but is not an ordinary
"research"
> journal. It's like a more liberal _Foundations of Physics_, or like the
now
> defunct _Speculations in Science and Technology_.
> I've talked to the Editor, E. Panarella, who thinks
> that there should be a forum for such speculation. After all, something
like
> string theory could start out in such a journal, so readers could start
playing
> with it before it develops to the point it belongs in Physical Review,
etc. PE
> published three articles of mine about relativistic dynamics of extended
bodies
> in 88-89, about issues which I now consider resolved.
>
> Neil Bates
I agree but with the basic idea but I was sent a paper to read that quoted
other papers in Phys Essays and they were more or less impossible to
understand. If a journal is going to publish controversial or "free
thinking" stuff it at least should make the effort not to seem advanced
simply by being obscure. Of course there is many a paper (most? :-) in well
known mainstream physics journals that are also obscure but you sort of
trust the refereeing process to make sure that under the obfuscation there
is something real (if this is reasonable is a different question).
There are clearly lots of things that need clarifying - see many of the
threads in this group - but to get a paper published in a journal gives it a
level of credence that might not be deserved if its only published because
it sounds good and is too difficult to form a critique in a reasonable time.
Mixing articles on the relativistic dynamics of extended bodies with
articles on strange phillosophy isn't a good idea but I guess the problem is
where to draw the line.
mikej
Rob Woodside
> snip
> As for Einstein, when he died, his desk was quite full. He never
> claimed to have actually arrived at a successful unified field theory.
>
and they rejected it as too mathematical? As a result he inserted it
at the end of the 5th edition of "Meaning of Relativity" where it got
a far wider distribution.
Lindeman kept Einstein out of England in 1933 fearing he would destroy
the British empirical tradition and turn a generation of graduate
students into pencil pushers. With the advent of string theory
Einstein appears to have succeeded far beyond Lindeman's wildest
dreams.
Were the 1905-06 Annalen der Physic refereed? By that time Einstein
was a respected young researcher for his work on stat mech & Brownian
motion. Still both special & general relativity were too controversial
for a Nobel prize. He got it for the photon and "other
contributions..." In his reference letter to Berlin for Einstein's
appointment, Poincare went out of his way to criticize the photon as
bad idea. Poincare forgave him the "error" of the photon because of
the wonderful other contributions. I would love to see those referee
reports, if they exist... "Doesn't the Author understand that a meter
is a meter and it doesn't change with motion. The same is true for
time. The Author appears to be unaware of the extensive literature on
rigid body motion. If I understand him correctly, his novel ideas
would vitiate this well tested body of knowledge..... The author
fails to understand what Huygens demonstrated long ago- light is a
wave!..."
Phillip Helbig---remove CLOTHES to reply
rw...@telus.net (Rob Woodside) writes:
> > As for Einstein, when he died, his desk was quite full. He never
> > claimed to have actually arrived at a successful unified field theory.
> >
> Didn't Einstein try to publish his final unified theory in Phys Rev
> and they rejected it as too mathematical? As a result he inserted it
> at the end of the 5th edition of "Meaning of Relativity" where it got
> a far wider distribution.
I'm not sure about that. However, Einstein never published in the
Physical Review again after he learned that it is refereed. When some
editorial changes were suggested to an article, he became very angry
that the editors dared show an unpublished work to his colleagues
without informing Einstein first. :-)
> Still both special & general relativity were too controversial
> for a Nobel prize. He got it for the photon and "other
> contributions..."
This is a persistent myth, very well debunked by Pais in his excellent
book "Subtle is the Lord...". SPECIAL relativity was very much "in the
air" and if Einstein hadn't come up with it, someone else would have.
(GENERAL relativity is a different matter, however.) Einstein himself
said that he wouldn't have published a lot of his statistical stuff had
he known about the papers of Gibbs. The photon, however, was really
going out on a limb. Both Einstein himself as well as his peers
regarded this idea as quite revolutionary, and as Pais points out this
is the particle with the longest time between initial concrete
suggestion and becoming accepted by the community.
Danny Ross Lunsford
> Were the 1905-06 Annalen der Physic refereed? By that time Einstein
> was a respected young researcher for his work on stat mech & Brownian
> motion. Still both special & general relativity were too controversial
> for a Nobel prize. He got it for the photon and "other
> contributions..."
In the "heroic period" stretching from Maxwell and Faraday through
Poincare and Einstein, typically one either worked with, or sent a
monograph to, an established scientist who would then sponsor the work
for publication if it had merit. There were people at ETH who fully
understood Einstein's skill (Hurwitz and even Weber). Also, it is very
likely that among the 1905 papers, the one on light quanta made the most
immediate noise. This was a very "hands-on" time for physics and most
physicists were interested in ideas with a direct impact on the
laboratory. It could very well be that the relativity paper went more or
less unnoticed at first. Only a very few people were fully aware of the
issues.
> In his reference letter to Berlin for Einstein's
> appointment, Poincare went out of his way to criticize the photon as
> bad idea. Poincare forgave him the "error" of the photon because of
> the wonderful other contributions.
Poincare was a mathematician, so we can forgive him *his* errors :)
-drl
Rob Woodside
> In the "heroic period" stretching from Maxwell and Faraday through
> Poincare and Einstein, typically one either worked with, or sent a
> monograph to, an established scientist who would then sponsor the work
> for publication if it had merit. There were people at ETH who fully
> understood Einstein's skill (Hurwitz and even Weber).
Very interesting, one then must ask "when did refereeing begin?"
> Also, it is very likely that among the 1905 papers, the one on light quanta > made the most immediate noise. This was a very "hands-on" time for physics
> and most physicists were interested in ideas with a direct impact on the
> laboratory.
In the early teens Millikan set out to disprove the photoelectric
effect and after a few years and having to construct a small factory
in vacuo, he experimentally confirmed it! That's the best kind of
confirmation. Lindeman said Eddington would burst if he couldn't get
the 1919 eclipse data to confirm Einstein's result. Eddington said it
was equivalent to measuring the thickness of a human hair at a
distance of 17 yards and the contraction of his gelatin plates plagued
the data.
> It could very well be that the relativity paper went more or
> less unnoticed at first. Only a very few people were fully aware of the
> issues.
Hmm. It did take Minkowski 3 years before publishing space-time.
Surely once he got the idea, it would only have taken him a few months
to put it together.
Rob Woodside
> > for a Nobel prize. He got it for the photon and "other
> > contributions..."
>
> This is a persistent myth, very well debunked by Pais in his excellent
> book "Subtle is the Lord...". SPECIAL relativity was very much "in the
> air" and if Einstein hadn't come up with it, someone else would have.
> (GENERAL relativity is a different matter, however.) Einstein himself
> said that he wouldn't have published a lot of his statistical stuff had
> he known about the papers of Gibbs. The photon, however, was really
> going out on a limb. Both Einstein himself as well as his peers
> regarded this idea as quite revolutionary, and as Pais points out this
> is the particle with the longest time between initial concrete
> suggestion and becoming accepted by the community.
The bits of Pais' book that I have read are simply wonderful and I
must make time to read the rest. It certainly is a persistant myth,
given credence by all the cranks who know how wrong relativity is. At
the time it wasn't just cranks who knew relativity was wrong. I've
heard that Michelson of Michelson/Morley fame went to his grave
disbelieving and Rindler mentions that Ives & Stilwell were also
unbelievers, presumably until they observed time dilation. I just
noticed the appendix in Pais's book "How Einstein got the Nobel Prize"
I'm not so sure Pais debunks the "myth". He says "It was the Academy's
bad fortune not to have anyone among its members who could competently
evaluate the content of relativity theory in those early years"
Possibly the lack of competent people was due to the large numbers who
knew the theory must be wrong.
I have heard that all the equations in the Electrodynamics of Moving
Bodies had been published elsewhere earlier, but no one had the
understanding that Einstein gave them. Late in life, Einstein in
conversation with Shankland remarked that anybody could have done
special relativity, but general relativity was his theory. He seems to
have forgotten that Hilbert published Einstein's equations a week
before Einstein did. Pais seems a little more generous to Einstein
than Jagdesh Mehra was on this point.