Sci Journals, authors, internet

Anonymous nobody at remailer.privacy.at
Wed Jun 12 10:04:04 PDT 2002


T.C. May writes:

> Anyone here who has not already done so should immediately type 
> "xxx.lanl.gov" into their browser. (No, the "xxx" is not a typo, nor is 
> it a porn site.)
>
> This is where physics papers are getting published. The print journals 
> are surviving, barely, but I think the handwriting is already on the 
> wall. As libraries balk at paying $6000 per year for "Journal of 
> Advanced Aptical Foddering" and as the referee system goes online as 
> well (*), the print journals will financially fail. Maybe no one will 
> notice.
>
> As John Baez has pointed out, most of the grad students he deals with 
> never visit the campus library. All papers of interest in cosmology, 
> quantum physics, solid state, etc. are being published on the arXhive 
> sites. In the last few months, I've been using this system extensively, 
> and have downloaded about 2500 pages of PDF files. I know how many pages 
> because I've printed out most of the papers. Five reams of paper 
> later....

Brilliant suggestion as usual.  This completely un-edited, un-reviewed
archive site accepts submissions from anyone in the world.  One might
as well learn physics from Jim Choate.  I wonder if Tim May's extensive
archive of printed papers includes such gems as these from xxx.lanl.gov:

http://xxx.lanl.gov/abs/physics/0205055
  This one explains that general relativity is all wrong to attribute
  gravity to curved spacetime, and cosmological red-shift to expansion.
  It shows how to get these effects from a flat spacetime geometry.

http://xxx.lanl.gov/abs/quant-ph/0204008
  "We found a fundamental principle, the law of statistical balance
  in nature, that specifies quantum statistical theory among all other
  statistical theories of measurements. This principle plays in quantum
  theory the role that is similar to the role of Einstein's relativity
  principle."

http://xxx.lanl.gov/abs/hep-th/0201115
  This astonishing paper tells what happens before the Big Bang.  During
  the pre-universe the vacuum evolves through four stages before producing
  the universe we see.  "The periodic table of elementary particles is
  constructed to account for all elementary particles and their masses
  in a good agreement with the observed values."  This is the holy grail
  of modern physics - a theory that explains the subatomic particle zoo!
  Definitely a must-have for Tim May's collection.

Clearly every one of these results would be shattering to the modern
physics paradigm, if true.  Tim May's advice puts readers at risk of
accepting the most absurd theories without any way of evaluating their
accuracy.

There is a reason why the peer review process and the academic journals
are still needed.  Online preprint archives are useless for the layman.
Only experts can use these archives with safety; they are able to sift
the wheat from the chaff.

As usual, readers are cautioned to take Tim May's "brilliant insights"
with a very generous grain of salt.





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