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Published online 30 January 2008 | Nature 451, 510 (2008) | doi:10.1038/451510a
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Fossil reptiles mired in controversy
Name-calling sparks dispute over aetosaurs.
An ethics row has broken out among palaeontologists over the naming of aetosaurs, a type of ancient armoured reptile.
Doctoral students in the United States and Poland are accusing scientists at the Albuquerque-based New Mexico Museum of Natural History and Science (NMMNHS) of publishing articles that allegedly pilfered their research.
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Two of the issues summarised in this article (the claim-jump on Parker's name and the unattributed use of Martz's osteoderm reinterpretation) are documented in great detail, with extracts of the relevant papers and copies of correspondence, at this URL: http://www.miketaylor.org.uk/dino/nm/timeline.html I urge readers to take a look at the evidence and make up their own minds.
It is simply not true as quotes in the Nature article claim that the NMMNHS Bulletin produces, "self published and non-peer reviewed papers". The NMMNHS editors demand to see two reviews for each article turned in at the time that the revised paper is submitted. Read the acknowldgements to confirm this. The authors may choose the reviewers, as is the case to various degress with many journals which ask for suggested reviewers. In many cases the NMMNHS editors ask the authors to chose certain reviewers so as to objectify the process (I know from direct experience). Journals like Nature and Science reject more than 90% of submissions, and other journals have high rejection rates. Such a process is also technically non-peer reviewed, but referred to as 'editoral discretion.' Thus, it is a purely subjective exercise to claim that one journal is better than another without providing detailed comparative information on how the journals operate. We need journals like NMMNHS Bulletin for healthy competition and as outlets for the growing body of scientific publication. I consider the NMMNHS Bulletin a very valuable source of paleontological information from all over the world. It is not just a regional journal but it is truly international, and many issues are the proceedings of international symposia. Moreover, I cannot find a single issue that was edited by Lucas and or Hunt alone. They always invite other, often multiple co-editors, to participate in objectfying the process. These are typically very competent individuals, if not persons of very high standing in the field. Martin Lockley University of Colorado at Denver
A Torrid Tale of Plagiarizing Paleontologists from the sexy-tales-of-science dept. http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/01/31/2135246 (The geeks comments there are priceless!) What do you expect when 'New Mexico', mostly carved out of sovereign Texas soil, is a myth? http://www.sonofthesouth.net/texas/pictures/texas-map-1846-1500.jpg The so-called STATES of TEXAS and NEW MEXICO are (ill-)'legal' / unlawful fictions in clear violation of the US constitution that, in LAW, cannot exist - having been founded on a tissue of lies. It looks good and legit, but reeks! Garbage in. Garbage out! RR
MOREOVER: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml?xml=/opinion/2004/04/15/dt1507.xml
Martin Lockley argued above that the article was untrue in its claim that the NMMNHS Bulletin publishes "self-published and non peer-reviewed papers", that the editors "demand" two reviews, and that this can be seen in the acknowledgements sections of the papers. To confirm Lockley's claims I examined several recent bulletins published by the museum. It is important to note that Spencer Lucas is an editor on each of these. Bulletin 31 (2005- The Permian of Central New Mexico) contains 22 articles (I did not include the field guides). Spencer Lucas is an author on 21 (95.4%) of these papers (and the two field guides BTW). 6 (27.2%) are written by the author combination of Adrian Hunt (museum director), Lucas (museum curator), and Justin Spielmann (museum collections manager) (they are also on the field trip guide BTW). The majority of these papers are under three pages in length and in checking the acknowledgements for mention of zero reviewers for 12 (54.5%) of these papers including the six by Hunt, Lucas, and Spielmann. In fact only seven articles in this volume mention reviewers and only 3 (13.6%)were reviewed by persons outside of the museum. Bulletin 37 (2006-The Triassic-Jurassic Terrestrial Transition) contains 76 articles of which Lucas is an author on 33 (43.4%). Co-editors Justin Spielmann and Martin Lockley(!) are also on quite a few contributions (11 for Spielmann and 17 for Lockley). Adrian Hunt is on 18 papers. Looking at the acknowledgements shows that almost all of the papers (16)composed solely by NMMNH staff only used a single outside reviewer on one article and the rest were reviewed by museum staff and/or volume editors. These include the Rioarribasuchus paper which was reviewed by Larry Rinehart (museum preparator) and Robert Sullivan (close Lucas colleague who AFAIK has not published much on aetosaurs). The Redondasuchus paper was reviewed by Jerry Harris (volume editor) and Sullivan again. Note: I am not saying that museum staff and the editors are not able to perform these reviews, just that to get fully objective reviews it is necessary to send out to a wider field of subject experts. Bulletin 40 (2007 - Triassic of the American West) has 13 articles (not including field trip guides) of which Lucas is an author on 11. Again the articles composed solely by museum staff were reviewed by people on the editorial board (Jerry Harris) or close colleagues (Andy Heckert and Bob Sullivan). This is just a small sampling of the wave of bulletins that have come out in recent years, many (besides published theses, dissertations, and special studies) edited by museum staff. As Lockley says, examination of the acknowledgement sections of papers in these volumes composed by museum staff is key to determining whether the Nature article comment was correct. I happen to disagree with Lockley based on the evidence. I will leave his comments about editorial policies and the differences between journals to others but will add that his comment about not finding Hunt and Lucas as sole co-editors of volumes true but misleading. Many of these volumes are edited solely by museum staff (e. g., bulletins 1,6, 11, 16, 17, 21,24, 25, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 40, 41) and Hunt is on the editorial board for several. I have also heard stories about what it is like to be a "co-editor" on one of these volumes but I must leave that for those individuals to discuss. Again I ask colleagues to investigate further and determine for themselves if the Nature Article is incorrect.
In April, 2005, I notified Spencer Lucas that I was severing all connection to the NMMNH&S. I had been an adjunct naturalist there, as well as collaborating author on two bulletins and some papers and presentations. Imagine my surprise when I learned in March of 2006 that I had been acknowledged as a reviewer in Spielmann, J.A., Andrew B. Heckert, S.G. Lucas, "The Late Triassic archosauromorph Trilophosaurus as an arboreal climber" Rivista Italiana Di Paleontoligia e Stratigrafia 111:3 (Dec 2005), p. 395-412. Not only was I never asked to review a technical paper like that, am I not qualified to do so. (I'm the kind of guy who, when someone says "Typothorax," responds with "What kind?") When I first questioned Justin Spielmann about it, he e-mailed simply to inquire whether I was now back from the dead. Confirming that I appeared to be, I e-mailed him about it again a few months later and got no response. Thus, not only was my name used on "The Late Triassic archosauromorph Trilophosaurus as an arboreal climber" without my knowledge or permission, it was used despite my notice that I was discontinuing my connection with NMMNH&S.
I am sorry to disagree with my old friend Martin Lockley, but the idea that the New Mexico Museum of Natural History and Science is in any rigorous sense a peer-reviewed journal is completely indefensible. That does not mean that the science in it is not good, or that no review at all ever occurs. But please consider the comments of Kate Ziegler and Vin Morgan, who have been on the inside of the process. Note also Bill Parker’s tabulation above. And let’s define standards. Peer review does not mean that you send a piece out to one or two friends or in-house colleagues and see if they catch any errors. It means that an editor (not you as author) selects two (or more) reviewers that you (may suggest but) don’t choose, who may remain anonymous, and who report their comments to the editor (not you), who then tells you what you need to do in order to bring the paper into publishable form, and decides whether you have done so after you revise. Compared to this procedure, by its own description the NMMNHS Bulletin does not have anything like a rigorous peer review. Again, that does not mean that the science in it is poor, but it does mean that there has not been a strong independent review process. And it certainly implies that work can be published more quickly. The citation index GeoRef does not consider the NMMNHS a peer-reviewed publication, and the ISI Web of Science does not list it, although both sources do list many other occasional (irregularly published) publications from paleontological and other museums. So that should serve as some independent and authoritative test of the opposing views that Martin and I hold. Let’s take an example from the NMMNHS itself. In 2007, according to GeoRef (once duplicated indexing is removed), Spencer Lucas was an author on 38 papers. Of these, 35 were in the NMMNHS Bulletin (which GeoRef does not regard as peer-reviewed) and 3 in Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology, which is peer-reviewed. Let’s focus on those first 35. For these to be peer-reviewed, even when handled by the author, they all had to be sent out to independent, unbiased referees who gave their reports in timely fashion to an editor to review and act on, then return to the author(s) for revision and resubmission. That’s 70 refereeing jobs. Maybe they could have been done in batches by fewer people. But according to Zeigler and Morgan, this was not the standard procedure. The point of this exercise is to test the claim that the NMMNHS Bulletin publishes "self-published and non peer-reviewed papers", and therefore that Lucas and his colleagues have a quick means of putting into print whatever they want without much external control. In the late 1800s, O.C. Marsh of Yale controlled the American Journal of Science for just that purpose, and E.D. Cope of Philadelphia bought the American Naturalist in order to do the same. This by itself is in no way malfeasance. But the evidence would seem to defeat the claim that there is a review process with the New Mexico series that prevents the possibility of such malfeasance. -- Kevin Padian, University of California, Berkeley
I thank Kevin Padian and Bill Parker for their comments, and also those who have mailed me directly. I can not enter into every detail of the cicumstances that sparked this dialog, as I am only really qualified to speak about publications that I co-edited. I simply wanted to comment generally on the issue of editorial policy in different journals. Ultimately journals set their own policy and such policy may include a strategy to attract a lot of papers that can be published quickly (or for instance to attract the proceedings of symposia, or to help publish doctotral theses: NMMNHS Bull does this). Ironically this is the policy of Nature and Science and academics mostly like quick publications Let me cite one example referred to by Bill Parker. My experience with Triassic Jurassic volume (Bull 37) was very positive for good reason. Many of the contributions were the result of many years of work, much of it focussed in the western USA, that culminated in a symposium held at Dixie College, Utah. So a western USA publication outlet was appropriate, even though other areas are also represented in the volume. Jerry Harris the senior editor did a lot to make this symposium happen. He also 'stood back' objectively as the lead editor and adhered to editorial guidelines in seeking 'peer reviews'. In fact he did an invaluable job, without being distracted by writing his own papers for the volume. NOTE THAT there were SIX editors on this volume including four who then had no formal connection with the Bulletin or the NMMNHS institution. One was the Utah State paleontologist (Kirkland) who put several papers through the UGS review system (although technically not required to do so by NMMNHS). Several editors were involved with long term Triassic-Jurassic projects in the St George area, supporting other researchers: but who better to collaborate on producing a volume. AND - REMEMBER- there are a limited number of potential reviewers who have expertise in a specialized field. Would the editorial oversight have been better if it had been a volume for a university or academic press? And would it have been published promptly? (I'm glad to see that Kevin implies that the science produced in such volumes can be perfectly acceptable). The point, as stated in my previous comment, is that four of the editors for this volume had no formal connection with he NMMNHS at the time (in fact we were mostly connected through various Utah agencies and initiatives), and, again, as I stated we/they are professional paleontologists and 'competent' in the field. While doing our own thing in the western USA, the NMMNHS provided a vehicle to serve as an outlet for such an 'integrated' symposium project, while also opening the scope of the project on a broader front. I fail to see any problem with this I never used the term 'rigorous' to describe any particular editorial policy (NMMNHS or otherwise)since I find this word both vague, overused (and even subjective). In my opinion it is a digression to quibble about how many papers a particular individual had in a particular volume. Some years I've contributed a few to NMMNHS, but often none. It depends on the subject. Yes, I was a coauthor on 17 papers in the Tr-Jur because I have worked for as many years (more in fact) in that region accumulating a lot of material. BUT this was 17 out of 76 papers. It was a BIG volume and valuable as a result we hope. I note that there is no explicit comment about the selection of reviewers on papers that I authored or coauthored. Thank you for that. I did in one or two cases forget to acknowledge reviewers. However, I also note that I selected reviewers from Italy, Germany, several Colorado, Utah and other institutions. Thankfully so far no one has complained about the scientific content or accuracy of any of these papers. And Kevin's point is apt in this regard. Competent sceintists can write good papers that would pass muster quickly when quickly reviewed by colleagues. I stress again that it is, or may, be a complete digression to pick apart an editorial policy if one is not compiling meticulous comparable data on a whole range of comparable publications. I have been annoyed on many occassions when I have openly reviewed a paper for a top flight journal, sent the authors and editors material they requested only to find that I am not acknowledged when it is published. It may be a mere oversight. It happens. I recently co-edited special volumes for Cretaceous Research, Ichnos, and other journals and the bottom line is that the editorial methods employed by these journals are not so different, in my experience, from what one might do with a regional journal like NMMNHS. This involves intelligent, collegial collaboration between co-editors and a limited number of specialists in the field. For example, I have had the experience of sending in a paper, then being asked to name a reviewer, and receiving only that one review and a cursory rubber stamp from the editor. I'm not saying that is standard practive for any specific named journal but it can and does happen. If the NMMNHS Bulletin, is on trail, someone will have to do an intensive study of a whiole range of regional publications to show that they operate to a significantly higher/different standard before I am pursuaded that there is anything out of the ordinary. (And who would objectively review such a study!!!!) AS A FOOTNOTE, with reference to Kate Ziegler's comment, I note two things: 1) she once reviewed one of my papers for NMMNHS and was very tough on it : good for her- reviewers have that prerogative. 2) she co-edited three NMMNHS Bulletins. I presume that she was content to put her name to them.
To add to comments made by Kevin Padian and others, both here and elsewhere, what is important in this case is that due process is seen to be observed. Allegations of claim jumping and plagiarism are very serious and, if well founded, should be acted upon promptly, as should false or mistaken accusations. Plagiarism cannot be tolerated, no matter what the circumstances or who is involved: it brings the subject into disrepute and seriously damages the professional reputations of all of those involved (both the accused and the accuser). Such claims should be evaluated thoroughly by the appropriate authorities (immediate superiors and/or senior peers) and the results and proceedures of such enquiries should be unambiguous and made available to the community following the conclusion of such an exercise.
In his previous posting, Dr. Lockley took issue with the assertion that the NMMHS bulletins do not practice adequately rigorous peer review. He suggests that the failure of many papers in the 2006 bulletin to list outside reviewers for a paper may be an oversight. Dr. Lockley also questions whether the high volume of papers in the NMMNHS bulletins contributed by the editors is really as anomalous as we claimed. Dr. Lockley's points might be valid in discussing an isolated case of a single paper, or a single bulletin, but do not hold up when considering the total output of the NMMHS bulletin series. Three volumes dealing with Late Triassic vertebrate paleontology, The Triassic-Jurassic Terrestrial Transition (no. 37), Triassic of the American West (no. 40), and The Global Triassic (no. 41), have been published by the NMMNHS within the past year and a half. Two more, Upper Triassic Stratigraphy and Paleontology (no. 21) and the Snyder Quarry bulletin (no. 24) were published in 2003. Yet another, Vertebrate Paleontology in Arizona (no. 29) containing several papers on Late Triassic vertebrate paleontology, was produced in 2005. These bulletins all have the same issues as the 2006 volume: all are edited in part by Dr. Lucas, who is also a contributor to multiple papers overwhelmingly reviewed by Lucas' close associates. For example, Dr. Lucas is author or co-author of 11 papers and 6 field trip guides in bulletin no. 40 (only two papers in the volume do not include him as an author), and author or co-author of 16 papers and abstracts in bulletin no. 41. In addition, Dr. Lockley's suggestion that the failure of papers in bulletin no. 37 to cite outside reviewers may be an accidental oversight is not supported by a review of the acknowledgements in papers that 2006 bulletin. Of those 76 papers, only seven (9 %) fail to mention reviews, and none of these is senior authored by members of the NMMNHS staff. Dr. Lockley suggests that editorial policy should not be criticized without "compiling meticulous comparable data on a whole range of comparable publications," but I challenge anyone to produce a reputable journal or bulletin with of the statistics I have just set forth above. Dr. Lockley also points out that the 2006 bulletin, which published the problematic papers on Rioarribasuchus and Redondasaurus, had multiple editors not currently affiliated with the museum: he, Jerry Harris, and Jim Kirkland, in addition to Dr. Lucas and Mr. Spielmann. However, pointing out that some papers in the NMMNHS bulletins receive adequate peer review is a red herring which does not nullify the important point made by Parker and Padian: many papers therein do not, and these include the problematic papers on Rioarribasuchus and Redondasaurus. This then also raises the question as to whether any outside editors saw these particular papers, or whether they were last-minute inclusions by the editors. Posted by the website editor on behalf of Jeffrey W. Martz, M.S. PhD student (Vertebrate Paleontology), Department of Geosciences, Texas Tech University.