'Dirty work', but someone has to do it: Howard P. Robertson and the refereeing practices of physical review in the 1930s

Notes and Records

Volumn 70, Issue 2, 2016, Pages 151-174

  Lalli, Roberto ^a  

^a MAX PLANCK INSTITUTE FOR THE HISTORY OF SCIENCE   (Germany)

Author keywords

Editorial policies; General relativity; Howard P. Robertson; John T. Tate; Peer review system; Physical Review

Indexed keywords

HISTORY; PEER REVIEW; PHYSICS; PUBLICATION; PUBLISHING; UNITED STATES;

EDITORIAL POLICIES; HISTORY, 20TH CENTURY; PEER REVIEW, RESEARCH; PERIODICALS AS TOPIC; PHYSICS; UNITED STATES;

EID: 84969261393     PISSN: 00359149     EISSN: 17430178     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1098/rsnr.2015.0022     Document Type: Article

References (100)

1. For some discussion about the flaws inherent in peer review see, for example, A. C. Weller, Editorial peer review: its strengths and weaknesses (Information Today Inc., Medford, NJ, 2001);
2. R. Smith, 'Peer review: a flawed process at the heart of science and journals', J. R.Soc. Med. 99, 178-182 (2006)
3. D. Rennie, 'Editorial peer review: its development and rationale', in Peer review in health sciences (ed. F. Goodlee and T. Jefferson), pp. 1-13 (BMJ Books, London, 1999). In 2006 the website of Nature hosted a debate on peer review that presented very contrasting views: see http://www.nature.com/nature/peerreview/debate/ (accessed 23 January 2015).
4. See, for example, E. Cattaneo and G. Corbellin, 'Stem cells: taking a stand against pseudoscience', Nature 510, 333-335 (2014);
5. 'Paper on controversial stem cell "stamina therapy" retracted', Retraction Watch, available online at http://retractionwatch.com/2014/ 12/10/paper-controversial-stem-cell-stamina-therapy-retracted/ (accessed 11 March 2015);
6. 'Deregulating stem cell quackery in Italy? A bad omen', Scienceblogs, posted 6 May 2013, available at http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2013/05/06/deregulating-stem-cell-quackeryin- italy/ (accessed 11 March 2015);
7. J. Travis and L. Margottini, 'More on quake, radongate, Guiliani', Science News, posted 7 April 2009, available at http://news.sciencemag.org/2009/ 04/more-quake-radongate-guiliani (accessed 11 March 2015).
8. A series of essays criticizing the conceptual unity of science and the methodological value of unification in science is included in P. Galison and D. J. Stump (eds) The disunity of science: boundaries, contexts, and power (Stanford University Press, 1996).
9. The relevance of peer review in certifying that a particular result is scientific is given at times extreme emphasis in science journalism. See, for example, S. Anthony, 'CERN's Higgs boson discovery passes peer review, becomes actual science', ExtremeTech (10 September 2012), available at http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/135756-cerns-higgs-boson-discoverypasses- peer-review-becomes-actual-science (accessed 11 March 2015).
10. For a sociological study on the boundary work and the employment of peer review in defining the boundaries of science see T. F. Gieryn, Cultural boundaries of science: credibility on the line (University of Chicago Press, 1999), esp. ch. 4;
11. for an interesting case study about the tension between academic freedom and peer-review-based boundary work see N. Nattrass, 'Defending the boundaries of science: AIDS denialism, peer review and the medical hypotheses saga', Sociol. Health Illn. 33, 507-521 (2011).
12. The expression 'standard model of scientific periodical' was introduced by A. Johns at the plenary roundtable discussion opening the conference 'Publish or perish? The past, present and future of the scientific periodical' held at the Royal Society on 19-21 March 2015.
13. A selection of the talks delivered at the conference has been published in A. Fyfe, J. McDougall-Waters, N. Moxham (eds), '350 years of scientific periodicals', Notes Rec. 69, 227-352 (2015).
14. For examples and a thorough analysis of contemporary fringe science see M. Gordin, The pseudoscience wars: Immanuel Velikovsky and the birth of the modern fringe (University of Chicago Press, 2012), esp. pp. 195-212;
15. a further example is the journal APEIRON: Studies in Infinite Nature, which was dedicated to publishing unorthodox physical theories. See http://redshift.vif.com/Apeiron-Home.htm (accessed 6 January 2016).
16. T. H. P. Gould, Do we still need peer review? An argument for change (Scarecrow Press, Lanham, MD, 2013);
17. J. J. Gaudet, 'All that glitters is not gold: the shaping of contemporary journal peer review at scientific and medical journals', uO Res. (2014), p. 4 (available at http://hdl.handle.net/10393/31238; accessed 6 January 2016).
18. In the entry 'peer review' of the Oxford English Dictionary the first example of the expression 'peer review system' dates back to 1967, in an article from Washington Post discussing a process of evaluation by review boards in the medical system. The first use in the academic sense dates back to 1971 and it is again related to medical practices. See http://www.oed.com/view/Entry/ 139736?rskey=1EeMPZ&result=1#eid (accessed 1 September 2015; requires subscription).
19. H. Zuckerman and R. Merton, 'Patterns of evaluation in science: institutionalization, structure and functions of the referee system', Minerva 9, 66-100 (1971), at p. 88.
20. For a historical analysis of the establishment of the refereeing practices in royal academies as an evolution of book censorship see M. Biagioli, 'From book censorship to academic peer review', Emergences 12, 11-45 (2001).
21. J. Burnham, 'The evolution of editorial peer review', J. Am. Med. Assoc. 263, 1323-1329 (1990)
22. D. Kronick, 'Peer review in 18th-century scientific journalism', J. Am. Med. Assoc. 263, 1321-1322 (1990).
23. Alex Csiszar, 'Broken pieces of fact: the scientific periodical and the politics of search in nineteenth-century France and Britain', PhD thesis, Harvard University (2010);
24. I. Clarke, 'The gatekeepers of modern physics: periodicals and peer review in 1920s Britain', Isis 106, 70-93 (2015);
25. I. Clarke and J. Mussell, 'Conservative attitudes to old-established organs: Oliver Lodge and Philosophical Magazine', Notes Rec. 69, 321-336 (2015);
26. M. Baldwin, 'Credibility, peer review, and Nature, 1945-1990', Notes Rec. 69, 337-352 (2015);
27. A. Fyfe, J. McDougall-Waters and N. Moxham, 'Guest editorial: 350 years of scientific periodicals', Notes Rec. 69, 227-239 (2015);
28. J. McDougall-Waters, 'Refereeing in the Philosophical Transactions, 1830-1900', presented at the conference 'Publish or perish? The past, present and future of the scientific periodical'.
29. For the concept of big picture see J. Secord, 'Introduction', Br. J. Hist. Sci. 26, 387-389 (1993).
30. D. Kaiser, 'Information overload', in D. Kaiser, American physics and the Cold War bubble (University of Chicago Press, in the press), ch. 3.
31. For the concept of scientific persona and its historical implications see L. Daston and H. O. Sibum, 'Introduction: scientific personae and their histories', Sci. Context 16, 1-8 (2003);
32. for the definition of epistemic virtues I refer to L. Daston and P. Galison, Objectivity (Zone Books, New York, 2007), esp. pp. 39-42.
33. J. Eisenstaedt, 'La relativité générale à l'étiage: 1925-1955', Arch. Hist. Exact Sci. 35, 115-185 (1986);
34. idem, 'The low water mark of general relativity: 1925-1955', in Einstein and the history of general relativity (Einstein studies, vol. 1) (ed. D. Howard and J. Stachel), pp. 277-292 (Birkhäuser, Boston, MA, 1987).
35. See A. Blum, R. Lalli and J. Renn, 'The re-invention of general relativity: a historiographical framework for assessing 100 years of curved space-time', Isis 106, 598-620 (2015).
36. A. Taub, 'Obituary: Prof. H. P. Robertson', Nature 192, 797-798 (1961);
37. J. Greenstein, 'Howard Percy Robertson, 1903-1961', Biogr. Mems Natl Acad. Sci. 51, 343-364 (1980).
38. On the status of theoretical physics in the USA before World War II see S. Schweber, 'The empiricist Temper Regnant: theoretical physics in the United States 1920-1950', Hist. Stud. Phys. Biol. Sci. 17, 55-98 (1986).
39. J. T. Tate to H. P. Robertson, 5 February 1937, Howard Percy Robertson Papers (hereafter HRP), 10024-MS, Caltech Archives, California Institute of Technology, folder 7.13;
40. J. W. Buchta to H. P. Robertson, 4 January 1940, HRP, folder 7.14.
41. J. L. Synge to H. P. Robertson, 27 April 1933, HRP, folder 5.25.
42. B. Bertotti, 'Cosmology, a peculiar science', in Modern cosmology in retrospect (ed. B. Bertotti, R. Balbinot, S. Bergia and A. Messina), pp. 3-9 (Cambridge University Press, 1990);
43. H. Kragh, Quantum generations: a history of physics in the twentieth century (Princeton University Press, 1999), esp. pp. 349-365;
44. 'Proceedings of the American Physical Society: minutes of the sixty-fourth meeting', Phys. Rev. 1, 60-84 (1913), at p. 63.
45. P. Hartman, A memoir on The Physical Review: a history of the first hundred years (AIP Press, New York, 1994), pp. 9-10;
46. D. J. Kevles, The physicists: the history of a scientific community in modern America (Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA, 1995), at p. 282.
47. K. Sopka, Quantum physics in America: the years through 1935 (American Institute of Physics, New York, 1988);
48. A. O. C. Nier and J. J. H. Van Vleck, 'John Torrence Tate, 1889-1950', Biogr. Mems Natl Acad. Sci. 47, 461-484 (1975).
49. R. Lalli, 'A new scientific journal takes the scene: the birth of Reviews of Modern Physics', Annln Phys. 526, A83-A87 (2014).
50. See M. Baldwin, '"Keeping in the race": physics, publication speed and national publishing strategies in Nature, 1895-1939', Br. J. Hist. Sci. 47, 257-279 (2014).
51. 'Finding Aid J. William Buchta Papers, 1923-1966: biographical sketch of J. William Buchta (1894-1966)', University of Minnesota Archives, available at http://special.lib.umn.edu/findaid/xml/uarc00367.xml (accessed 21 September 2015).
52. Physical Review referee files, 1932-1943, Niels Bohr Library and Archive, American Institute of Physics.
53. Robertson to Tate, 18 February 1937, HRP, folder 7.13.
54. See, for example, Robertson to Tate, 26 December 1931, HRP, folder 7.12.
55. Robertson to Tate, 9 June 1930, HRP, folder 7.12.
56. Robertson to Tate, 18 August 1930, HRP, folder 7.12.
57. Tate to Robertson, 30 January 1931, HRP, folder 7.12.
58. See, for example, Buchta to Robertson, 27 July 1939, HRP, folder 7.13.
59. H. P. Robertson, referee report on 'On the Quantization of Mass', by B. Podolsky and H. Branson, 11 July 1939, HRP, folder 7.13.
60. Tate to Robertson, 14 April 1936, HRP, folder 7.12.
61. Silberstein to Tate, 6 April 1936, HRP, folder 7.12.
62. Tate to Robertson, 7 January 1933, HRP, folder 7.12.
63. Tate to Robertson, 29 September 1936, HRP, folder 7.12.
64. See, for example, Robertson to Tate, 15 May 1933, HRP, folder 7.12.
65. An example of more impersonal referee reports is H. P. Robertson, referee report on Lanczos' 'A New Connection between Electricity and Riemannian Geometry', HRP, folder 7.12.
66. Slater to Tate, 2 October 1930, John Clarke Slater Papers, Mss.B.SL2p, American Philosophical Society, folder Tate/1.
67. Buchta to Robertson, 14 July 1938, HRP, folder 7.13.
68. H. P. Robertson, referee report on 'Remarks on the Redshift from Nebulae' by F. Zwicky, ca. September 1935, HRP, folder 7.12.
69. W. F. G. Swann, referee report on 'Dipole Origin of the Earth's Electric Gradient' by M. C. Holmes, 2 November 1936, William Francis Gray Swann Papers, Mss. B. Sw. 1, American Philosophical Society, folder John T. Tate 1934-1936.
70. See, for example, Robertson to Tate, 23 May 1936, HRP, folder 7.12.
71. The last of Robertson's referee reports based on the questionnaire is dated 18 September 1952.
72. H. P. Robertson, referee report on 'Arbitrary Concentration of matter and the Schwarzschild Singularity', by Amalkumar Raychaudhury, HRP, folder 7.14.
73. See, for example, H. P. Robertson, referee report on 'Static Universe and Nebular Red Shift II', by S. Sambursky and M. Schiffer, 30 September 1937, HRP, folder 7.13;
74. H. P. Robertson, referee report on 'Stellar Statistics and Bode's Law', by H. Jehle, ca. June 1938, HRP, folder 7.13.
75. H. P. Robertson, referee report on 'The Basis of a Theory of the Universe I' by F. L. Arnot, 25 September 1937, HRP, folder 7.13.
76. H. P. Robertson, referee report on 'On the Interchange Energy of Two Free Electrons', by Podolsky and Ludeke, ca. 1938, HRP, folder 7.13.
77. H. P. Robertson, referee report on 'On the General Motion of Matter at a Cosmological Scale' by Antonio Gião, ca. December 1949, HRP, folder 7.14.
78. H. P. Robertson, referee report on 'The Physical Significance of Birkhoff's Gravitational Equations', by H. E. Ives, ca. March 1947, HRP, folder 7.14.
79. H. P. Robertson, referee report on 'On a Gravitational Theory of Neutrinos', by Gleb Wataghin, ca. February 1937, HRP, folder 7.13.
80. H. P. Robertson, referee report on 'A Relation Between the Gravitational Constant and Hubble's Factor', by W. J. Haas, November 1937, HRP, folder 7.13.
81. and Buchta to Robertson, 3 January 1950, HRP, folder 7.14.
82. Swann to Tate, 5 November 1936, William Francis Gray Swann Papers, Mss. B. Sw. 1, American Philosophical Society, folder John T. Tate 1934-1936.
83. D. Kennefick, Traveling at the speed of thought: Einstein and the quest for gravitational waves (Princeton University Press, 2007), pp. 79-104;
84. on the editorial practices followed in the eminent Annalen der Physik in the first decades of the twentieth century see C. Jungnickel and R. McCormmach, Intellectual mastery of nature, vol. 2 (The Now Mighty Theoretical Physics 1870-1925) (University of Chicago Press, 1986), pp. 310-321;
85. D. Hoffmann, '". . . you can't say to anyone to their face: your paper is rubbish.' Max Planck as editor of Annalen Der Physik', Annln Phys. 17, 273-301 (2008).
86. On the relevance of novelty see, for example, H. P. Robertson, referee report on 'On Nullgeodesics and Null-Corpuscles in the Theory of Relativity', by C. G. Pendse, 16 March 1939, HRP, folder 7.13.
87. F. Ingelfinger, 'Peer review in biomedical publication', Am. J. Med. 56, 686-692 (1974).
88. Tate to Robertson, 7 January 1936, HRP, folder 7.12.
89. D. Kennefick, 'Einstein versus the Physical Review', Phys. Today 58, 43-48 (2005), at p. 46.
90. H. P. Robertson, referee report on 'The Relativistic Theory of Spinning Charged Particles in Electromagnetic Fields', by William Band, ca. April 1939, HRP, folder 7.13.
91. H. P. Robertson, referee report on 'The Red Shift of the Nebular Spectrum Lines', by Ira Freeman, HRP, folder 7.13;
92. Robertson to Goudsmit, 13 December 1954, HRP, folder 7.14.
93. Robertson to Tate, 27 July 1936, HRP, folder 7.12.
94. Robertson to Tate, 16 January 1935, HRP, folder 7.12.
95. H. P. Robertson, referee report on 'The Basis of a Theory of the Universe. II', by F. L. Arnot, HRP, folder 7.13.
96. H. P. Robertson, referee report on 'On the Ratio of h/2 and e2/c' Parts I and II', by Alfred Landé, HRP, folder 7.13.
97. See H. P. Robertson, referee report on 'The Basis of a Theory of the Universe. II', by F. L. Arnot, HRP, folder 7.13; see also Robertson to Eric Temple Bell, 15 September 1936, HRP, folder 1.13.
98. P. Robertson, referee report on 'On Eddington's Treatment of Dirac's Equation', by Boris Podolsky, 13 February 1938, HRP, folder 1.13.
99. See, for example, H. P. Robertson, 'Referee Report on 'Static Universe and Nebular Red Shift' by S. Sambursky, 1 April 1937, HRP, folder 1.13.
100. Robertson to Tate, 22 May 1936, HRP, folder 1.12.