I had the exact same experience both as a grad student and when at Harvard, of reviewers sitting on a paper and quickly replicating the work to scoop you. Peer review is BS and narrative control.
LOL Alex, you are so much more patient and more dedicated than I am. I absolutely applaud your willingness to lay all this out.
I share your angst completely. It's a mess and it has always been a mess and I gave up a long time ago.
Here's a quick heuristic to test whether someone is a qualified peer reviewer: do they want to do it? If the answer is yes, then they are more than likely unqualified. Like all heuristics, this is not 100% accurate. But it's close enough for rock and roll and rock and roll is more effective than science bureaucracy by miles and miles.
In the best of times a mind with your brilliance and integrity would experience what Mozart experienced in Amadeus. But understand, The Great Euthanizers and their global public-private partnership and $10 Trillion in the bank are “executing” on every conceivable front now and “ science “ is just one of them.
Thank you for your great courage, clarity, charity, commitment, and sacrifice.
Almost time to write a short update including Michael Eisen's statements reg. that he thought they would have fired him anyway if he'd published this paper, that eLife does not like controversy, and that they had received a review and were promised another one? What do think?
Alex, I’m no scientist, not even close but when I watched Dr.Jay Bhattacharya interview you, I saw a young person full of integrity, honesty and exceptionally brilliant. Never let anyone take that from you.
I observed early in this mess, something was different about this virus. It attacked multi systems and it wasn’t weakening. Then I read Elaine DeWar’s “The origin of the deadliest pandemic in 100 years.” The book left no doubt in my mind that this was created in a lab and it leaked. The corruption, the cover-ups and misinformation abound.
Thank you for your hard work, you’re a breath of fresh air.
This is a fascinating story well told. The only questionable part to me is the comment,
"After acceptance, eLife sent us a $2,000 invoice, but we did not have the funds to pay for it unless we could ensure their presentation of our work was professional."
If the work was so important you should have just paid the money and not worried about the formatting. I have had to pay this amount from my personal income recently to get a paper published (due to lack of laboratory funds) and it does hurt, but it was worthwhile to get the paper out there (after an extended review process) and for the postgraduate student involved.
I had the exact same experience both as a grad student and when at Harvard, of reviewers sitting on a paper and quickly replicating the work to scoop you. Peer review is BS and narrative control.
LOL Alex, you are so much more patient and more dedicated than I am. I absolutely applaud your willingness to lay all this out.
I share your angst completely. It's a mess and it has always been a mess and I gave up a long time ago.
Here's a quick heuristic to test whether someone is a qualified peer reviewer: do they want to do it? If the answer is yes, then they are more than likely unqualified. Like all heuristics, this is not 100% accurate. But it's close enough for rock and roll and rock and roll is more effective than science bureaucracy by miles and miles.
As a former academic, I am so glad that we now have Substack to get out the message.
In the best of times a mind with your brilliance and integrity would experience what Mozart experienced in Amadeus. But understand, The Great Euthanizers and their global public-private partnership and $10 Trillion in the bank are “executing” on every conceivable front now and “ science “ is just one of them.
Thank you for your great courage, clarity, charity, commitment, and sacrifice.
BRAVO, Alex!
Yours is an excellent commentary and a model for others to emmulate.
Hey Alex,
wonderful summary!
Almost time to write a short update including Michael Eisen's statements reg. that he thought they would have fired him anyway if he'd published this paper, that eLife does not like controversy, and that they had received a review and were promised another one? What do think?
Thanks for being who you are,
Val
Alex, I’m no scientist, not even close but when I watched Dr.Jay Bhattacharya interview you, I saw a young person full of integrity, honesty and exceptionally brilliant. Never let anyone take that from you.
I observed early in this mess, something was different about this virus. It attacked multi systems and it wasn’t weakening. Then I read Elaine DeWar’s “The origin of the deadliest pandemic in 100 years.” The book left no doubt in my mind that this was created in a lab and it leaked. The corruption, the cover-ups and misinformation abound.
Thank you for your hard work, you’re a breath of fresh air.
Honest posts like this contributing to open scientific discourse are what really make Substack worthwhile.
Thanks, Alex!
The swamp is so damn deep.
D.C., the universities, the MIC, the Courts, the Lawyers. Damn the CIA and everything corrupted by it.
Excellent
When Kary Mullis invented PCR, the most prestigious journals rejected it. Both Nature and Science rejected it. Enough said.
This is a fascinating story well told. The only questionable part to me is the comment,
"After acceptance, eLife sent us a $2,000 invoice, but we did not have the funds to pay for it unless we could ensure their presentation of our work was professional."
If the work was so important you should have just paid the money and not worried about the formatting. I have had to pay this amount from my personal income recently to get a paper published (due to lack of laboratory funds) and it does hurt, but it was worthwhile to get the paper out there (after an extended review process) and for the postgraduate student involved.
Alex how do you feel about this debate, which fell strongly towards natural origin:
https://protagonistfuture.substack.com/p/lableak-truther-loses-100000-in-his