John Sorenson on Mesoamerica and the Ancient Near East

[_MCB]

Although I have been aware of that book for quite a while, I am not really interested in the MesoAmerican location. I prefer dealing with the Great Lakes, since that is the original interpretation. However, Daniel, you have certainly sparked my interest. Thank you for your help. I may gain some insight from reading the book.

[_harmony]

The New York Times has a large readership and is enormously influential, but it is not peer reviewed.

This doesn't help your position. It's a newspaper; newspapers aren't ever peer reviewed.

Scholarly articles are regularly peer reviewed, so by that standard, Sorenson's isn't up tonthe scholarly article standard. Unless you're saying scholarly articles aren't peer reviewed?

[_Joey]

There are, plainly, conflicting opinions out there, from both experts and pretended experts.

What qualifies one as, under your standards, as an expert bs a pretend expert? Would, for example, Brandt Garner be considered in academic circles of Sorenson and Clark, be considered an expert in mesoamerica studies or would he be considered, under your definition, a pretend expert?

And related to LDS scholarship on the circles of Sorenson and Clark, nearly 7 years ago you specifically told me that LDS scholarship in the area of Book of Mormon historicity wasn't so much rejected as it was ignored. (assumption being it couldn't be rejected until it was even known about first).

Has this position of yours changed in the past 7 years to date?

Is such scholarship still ignored or has it generated any interest from the secular interest in archaeology or history?

[_Daniel Peterson]

This doesn't help your position. It's a newspaper; newspapers aren't ever peer reviewed.

Precisely.

Newspapers and magazines and books can be enormously influential and read by vast numbers of people without peer review because peer review is an utterly distinct matter from either influence or readership. In fact, if there's any relationship between them at all, it's an inverse one (albeit coincidental): Peer reviewed materials typically have smaller audiences and less popular influence than do even local community newspapers.

Scholarly articles are regularly peer reviewed, so by that standard, Sorenson's isn't up tonthe scholarly article standard.

Only if, in fact, it wasn't peer reviewed. But that is precisely the question at issue. Do you have any evidence that it was not?

I'm wondering, by the way, whether you might not be misapplying the term peer review. Peer review refers to a particular part of the editorial process prior to an article's or book's publication. It has absolutely nothing to do with how many scholars -- if any -- approve of, or even read, the article or book after its appearance.

In typical academic publishing, a manuscript is sent out for evaluation to 2-4 people whom the editor believes to be in a position to judge whether it meets certain criteria for publication. Based on their reports, the editor decides whether or not to proceed to publication. Very often, on the basis of their reports, the editor will ask the author(s) of the manuscript to make certain changes.

And that's the end of it. When the article or book goes to press, peer review is over and done.

I've served many times as a peer reviewer for a number of journals and publishers. Moreover, as an editor, I've commissioned peer reviews far more times than I can count. There's nothing particularly mysterious about the process.

Unless you're saying scholarly articles aren't peer reviewed?

Most are. (And a lot of mediocre stuff, and even some garbage, passes peer review.) Some articles are not. (I know of at least one fairly prominent journal for ancient history and philology, for example, that doesn't use peer review, and I know of several quite eminent periodicals in linguistics that do not. Their editors accept and reject submitted manuscripts based on their own judgment.)

There are critics of the contemporary academic peer review process -- which evolved comparatively recently (Einstein's crucial early scientific papers from 1905 and 1906, which won him the Nobel Prize and revolutionized modern physics, were never peer reviewed) -- who argue that it stifles creativity and imposes conformity.

[_harmony]

(Einstein's crucial early scientific papers from 1905 and 1906, which won him the Nobel Prize and revolutionized modern physics, were never peer reviewed)

Perhaps because he had no peers?

-- who argue that it stifles creativity and imposes conformity.

Sounds like an institution we both know...

[_Daniel Peterson]

Perhaps because he had no peers?

There were plenty of very good physicists around. Einstein hadn't yet become "EinsteinTM" at that point -- he didn't even have an academic appointment, but was a clerk in the Swiss federal patent office -- so the lack of peer review wasn't because they were awestruck and intimidated by him. It was standard operating procedure in that and other scientific journals of the era.

-- who argue that it stifles creativity and imposes conformity.

Sounds like an institution we both know...

I don't really know much about Washington State, actually. I've never even been to the campus.

[_Kishkumen]

I declared nobody "ignorant." I said nothing of the sort. But I can certainly be made to look bad if your accusation sticks!

I'm sure you don't need my help. Anyone who reads closely can see that your passive-aggressive attempt to make me look unfair is a distortion of what I said. I was speaking specifically of their ignorance concerning Sorenson, which logically flows from the discussion. You obviously intended to highlight their ignorance concerning his overall scholarship by raising the question.

I can't blame you for trying.

[_Daniel Peterson]

I can't blame you for trying.

Sigh. By contrast, I can blame myself for trying, and I do. I'm obviously a slow learner.

Best wishes to you.

[_NorthboundZax]

It isn't much of a spike to express skepticism while being unwilling to provide information to buttress that skepticism.

Sure it is.

X makes sweeping statement.

Y expresses doubt that X or anybody in X's set of likely sympathizers has enough information to make such a generalization, saying that he himself does not. The doubt seems intuitively obvious, in any event..

Nobody -- neither X nor anybody else -- steps forward to claim possession of the information necessary to support X's generalization.

Seems a very generous reading of your words (i.e., "spiking the notion" implies a great deal more certainty than the statement above), but whatever. We can both acknowledge that the above is the essence of your counter.

The Katunob article is the best place to start of all the Sorenson works you posted in this thread for combatting the charge you want to spike.

How would showing that the Katunob article had a large readership and was enormously influential demonstrate anything about whether or not it was peer reviewed? The New York Times has a large readership and is enormously influential, but it is not peer reviewed.

Huh? There was no disagreement that the Katunob article was peer-reviewed. The question was about its influence. It is silly to argue that a paper's relevance doesn't depend on its readership. Of course all scholarly journals have smaller readership than the Times, but that doesn't mean they can't and shouldn't be evaluated by such measures - just that one needs to normalize against other scholarly journals of similar emphasis rather than non-peer-reviewed periodicals. E.g., impact factors and citation rates are designed to try to evaluate such things. I am finding myself astounded that I even have to write this stuff as I'm sure you are aware of it. So, I am puzzled that you are presenting such lame analogies like comparisons to the Times that require such explanations. In essence, if Katunob has limited readership (then limited influence), it was either a poor choice of venue to present the work or it was the only type of venue where it could find a home.

And why would the Katunob article be a better place to judge whether or not Professor Sorenson's work was peer reviewed, than, say, his chapters in books published by the universities of Texas and Hawaii?

I focused on that one because you had posted it with the implication that it was a useful publication for evaluation and it looked to me like it the greatest potential of the ones you posted to make the argument you wanted to make in the OP. I was then surprised that I couldn't find anything on Google Scholar that would support that publication as having any impact on the scientific community. From your response, it sounds like you don't have anything to add to what I came up with, so maybe we should drop that one and move to one of the book chapters. But the 1971 UTexas one is only coming up marginally better in Google Scholar than the Katunob article. (again GS often misses a sizable fraction of citations, but is usually representative).

From what I see, the UT publication has 2 citations from the archaeological community: One positive and one negative. The two papers arguing over the merits of diffusionist theory from each side. Maybe the Mair compilation will fare better. *shrug*

Even if you don't want to pursue this further, I think you owe FloatingBoy a response since you emphatically denied my suggested scenario to him.

[_Daniel Peterson]

Huh? There was no disagreement that the Katunob article was peer-reviewed.

But whether or not John Sorenson altogether lacked peer-reviewed publications was precisely the question that I was addressing. It had been implied that he lacked such publications.

The question was about its influence.

That was never my question. It is a question that, on the whole, doesn't interest me much.

It is silly to argue that a paper's relevance doesn't depend on its readership.

I agree, and have made no such argument.

Of course all scholarly journals have smaller readership than the Times, but that doesn't mean they can't and shouldn't be evaluated by such measures - just that one needs to normalize against other scholarly journals of similar emphasis rather than non-peer-reviewed periodicals. E.g., impact factors and citation rates are designed to try to evaluate such things. I am finding myself astounded that I even have to write this stuff as I'm sure you are aware of it.

I'm perfectly aware of it.

It's just not an issue that I've ever addressed here, and it's not an issue that I particularly care to discuss.

I care very, very much whether a given publication is any good. If it is, I hope that it's widely read. If it isn't widely read, I lament that very briefly, and then move on.

I judge publications by their insightfulness, by the quality of the evidence that they adduce, and by the rigor of the logic with which they analyze it. The size of their audience is, to me, a matter of tertiary importance. To put it crudely, I don't care, even slightly, about popularity polls.

So, I am puzzled that you are presenting such lame analogies like comparisons to the Times that require such explanations.

The analogies were perfectly spot on, and not even slightly lame. Of course, if they're misunderstood and misapplied, if they're assumed to be making a point that they were never designed to make, they will seem lame. But that is quite a different thing.