CCL: On "defending" and "opposing" science

 Sent to CCL by: "Salter-Duke, Brian James -"
 [brian.james.duke]^[gmail.com]
 I would like to add another issue. It seems to have become common for
 the authors to be asked to nominate referees. The editor then takes the
 easy way out and uses the nominated referees at least in part. This
 should be stopped as it allows two groups to mutually support each
 other, even if subconsciously. However, authors should be allowed to
 nominate people who they do not want to act as referees, thus allowing
 them to not have their paper refereed by people they think are
 prejudiced against their ideas.
 Brian Duke.
 On Sun, Aug 19, 2012 at 07:41:52PM +0000, Mezei, Mihaly mihaly.mezei###mssm.edu
 wrote:
 >
 > Sent to CCL by: "Mezei, Mihaly" [mihaly.mezei-.-mssm.edu]
 > Greetings,
 >
 > This thread has touched upon many important issues so I feel justified to
 include one more: the abdication of responsibilities of many editors. Like one
 of the posters' experience where an editor ignored a referee suggestion because
 of two other referees' opposing view, I had editor ignoring my specific
 arguments against a referee's (negative) argument and telling me that I have to
 convince that referee (not him). I suggest that the community insist of the
 editors being more than simple vote counters; instead they should actively
 arbitrate the discussion between the author(s) and referees. This way there
 would be less need for a post-publication discussion. There is, of course,
 always the avenue of publishing a comment on a paper in the traditional way.
 >
 > Mihaly Mezei
 >
 > Department of Structural and Chemical Biology, Mount Sinai School of
 Medicine
 > Voice:  (212) 659-5475   Fax: (212) 849-2456
 > WWW (MSSM home): http://www.mountsinai.org/Find%20A%20Faculty/profile.do?id=0000072500001497192632
 > WWW (Lab home - software, publications): http://inka.mssm.edu/~mezei
 > WWW (Department): http://atlas.physbio.mssm.edu
 >
 --
    Brian Salter-Duke (Brian Duke)   Brian.Salter-Duke() monash.edu
                     Adjunct Associate Professor
             Monash Institute of Pharmaceutical Sciences
       Monash University Parkville Campus, VIC 3052, Australia