Answers Research Journal

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Answers Research Journal[1] (ISSN 19379056) is a "peer-reviewed" (in the peer-creationist sense...) creation "science" "journal", with all "scare quoted" terms used loosely.[2] It is published by Answers in Genesis, and it features a lot of history, philosophy and Bible analysis pieces, but not much in the way of science. In an article about ARJ and related issues, one of the contributors states the journal's point of view: "'We have a particular viewpoint,' Purdom stated, referring to the ARJ. 'We start with the Bible as being true. And many other journals do not. They are going to start with human reasoning as the basis for truth.'”[3]

Appropriately enough for a journal of pseudoscience, authors are free to publish under pseudonyms, ostensibly to avoid persecution for their beliefs.[4][5][6]

Ulrich's Periodical Directory™ classifies the journal under "Religions and Theology",[7] despite having many science categories available.

Upon creation of the journal, Scientific American[8] and Discover[9] quickly published criticism of the site. Slate[4] and AiG themselves[10] have also traded commentary.

Contents

[edit] Judging criteria

"Answers" lists a bizarre set of criteria for articles submitted for publication:

  1. Is the paper’s topic important to the development of the Creation and Flood model?
  2. Does the paper’s topic provide an original contribution to the Creation and Flood model?
  3. Is this paper formulated within a young-earth, young-universe framework?
  4. If the paper discusses claimed evidence for an old earth and/or universe, does this paper offer a very constructively [sic] positive criticism and provide a possible young-earth, young-universe alternative?
  5. If the paper is polemical in nature, does it deal with a topic rarely discussed within the origins debate?
  6. Does this paper provide evidence of faithfulness to the grammatical-historical/normative interpretation of Scripture? [11]

Number 4 is by far the most important. The parallel criterion in a science journal would read, "If the paper discusses claimed evidence for science, does this paper offer a very constructive positive criticism and provide a possible pseudoscientific alternative?" Most of the published articles are invalid by criterion 2 as they are mostly re-hashed creationist propaganda.

Unlike a scientific journal, no data or methods section is required for an Answers Research Journal article.

[edit] Editor-in-Chief

Andrew A. Snelling[12] is the editor-in-chief, who claims to have "more than 24 years of technical scientific publication experience,"[13] including In Six Days, Why fifty scientists choose to believe in creation.[14][15] Unfortunately the highlight of this experience includes founding the Journal of Creation. He is also quoted as saying:

“ It is our hope that the online publication of ARJ will encourage Christians with powerful results of the latest creationist research, providing them with new resources for use in their own research and education—and in their witnessing to the truth and authority of God’s Word.[16] ”

Err... and the science?

As of March 6, 2008 Snelling has done the herculean task of writing two of the first six articles in ARJ[17] and editing the journal in its entirety! And, he has ties to the Institute for Creation Research, which funded some of his work![18][19] What a trouper!

[edit] Content analysis

[edit] Volume 1 articles

Volume 1 consisted of the 195 pages of content published in 2008. (As a comparison, the journal Biochemistry published 14038 pages in 2008, volume 47, or about 72 times more content.[20])

[edit] Volume 2 articles

Volume 2 ran through 2009, publishing 16 papers with a total length of 210 pages. For comparison: the current issue, at the time of writing, of the Journal of Evolutionary Biology Volume 23 Issue 3 (March 2010) - had 17 research papers, 1 review paper and two communication for 210 page.[21]

[edit] Volume 3 articles

[edit]
Those Enigmatic Neanderthals: What Are They Saying? Are We Listening?

Anne Habermehl, January 13, 2010

Yet another review-ish article about which of two fringe creationist theories explaining Neanderthals is best. This article argues for the view ignored by even creationists, that Neanderthals were humans that lived a few hundred years that died out after the Flood after they no longer lived so old. The distinctive look of Neanderthals damped out after no longer lived so long and lost their distinctive Neanderthal-ness. All in 4000 years! Along with the romp through "Was Homo erectus man or ape?", this silly article is all post hoc reasoning.

Enigmatic, indeed!

[edit]
Numerical Simulation of Precipitation in Yosemite National Park with a Warm Ocean: A Pineapple Express Case Study

Larry Vardiman and Wesley Brewer, February 17, 2010

Hmmmm... Let's look at a big storm in 1996 and pretend it extrapolates to the massive Global flood. Ignoring that this probably contradicts Flood geology, this feasibility study has one sentence about creationism: "Glaciers thousands of feet thick could have readily developed during hundreds of years following the Genesis Flood." Gee, that's nice. Any evidence of the actual post-Flood period?

[edit] Accusations of deceit and questions on the peer-review process

For AiG's take on an "evolutionist"'s attempt to "discredit" the journal, see their website.[22] Interestingly, no one ever seems to try to discredit science journals for some reason, nor would a science journal editor lambast a creationist for doing so. Interestingly, Snelling comments on the evolutionist's scientific inaccuracies in an e-mail, and comments that "[U]nless you can somehow seriously demonstrate in a proper and rigorous scientific manner and therefore convince me otherwise, I must reject your paper as bogus, and an attempt to claim a prize being offered on the Internet for successful deception."

One must wonder about the journal's peer-review process. Does that mean that Dr. Snelling is hand-picking articles for this journal instead of sending it to a few reviewers and finding the reviewers' consensus? Is it really professional to imply an intent to win an internet prize without more evidence, when the journal could just reject the article on its selection criteria? Why is the submitter's e-mail and the reply to a submitter made public and not kept confidential? Even if the submitter is kept anonymous, to use one's submission to make a point is questionable ethically.

[edit] See also

Subpages

[edit] Footnotes

  1. ↑ http://www.answersingenesis.org/arj/
  2. ↑ Loosely, as in completely inaccurately.
  3. ↑ http://www.jyi.org/features/ft.php?id=1515
  4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 http://www.slate.com/id/2184384
  5. ↑ "Any author using a pen name or who has a reason for not wanting their biographical details publicized on the AiG website should specifically request this, and their wishes will be respected." from page three of the instructions to authors (large pdf file).
  6. ↑ Although, quite honestly, if that's the best publishing you can do as an academic, you probably don't deserve tenure. In fact, it may be against some university's policies to publish anonymously work that you supposedly did "in the line of duty".
  7. ↑ http://www.ulrichsweb.com/ulrichsweb/ulrichsweb_news/uu/newTitles.asp?uuMonthlyFile=uu200712/new_titles.txt&Letter=R&navPage=9&
  8. ↑ http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=news-bytes-mystery-illness-strikes-bats
  9. ↑ http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/discoblog/2008/02/13/inside-a-creationist-journal/
  10. ↑ http://www.answersingenesis.org/articles/2008/02/16/news-to-note-02162008 #5 on the list
  11. ↑ http://www.answersingenesis.org/assets/pdf/arj/instructions-to-authors.pdf page nine.
  12. ↑ For more about Dr. Snelling, see here
  13. ↑ http://www.answersingenesis.org/arj/about
  14. ↑ http://www.christiananswers.net/catalog/bk-sixdays.html
  15. ↑ Whew! A whole 50! That's like a mid-sized graduate program!
  16. ↑ http://blogs.answersingenesis.org/aroundtheworld/2008/01/11/free-answers-research-journal/
  17. ↑ A critical blog post on Snelling's role as editor of Answers Research Journal is here
  18. ↑ http://www.answersingenesis.org/home/area/bios/a_snelling.asp
  19. ↑ https://www.icr.org/research/index/research_physci_snelling/
  20. ↑ http://pubs.acs.org/loi/bichaw
  21. ↑ Journal of Evolutionary Biology Volume 23 Issue 3
  22. ↑ http://www.answersingenesis.org/articles/2008/05/14/caught-in-the-act
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