Letter to the Editor of PNAS

(17 December 2011)

Dear Editor,

As a coauthor of the paper PNAS: 2011-20808 (Spurious switching processes in financial markets) that you just rejected, I cannot remain silent and have to express my concern with how science is handled in general in journals such as PNAS. You are not alone a Science and Nature have in general the same reactions. I know that you will not change your mind in this instance, but I do hope that, little by little, the whole editorial community may become a bit wiser over time.

In a nutshell, your policy stating "it would have to go beyond a simple refutation of the earlier work and significantly add to the field", implies

1) a fundamental error can remain published as "truth" in PNAS without the normal debate that should be the domaim of real science. In my opinion, this is especially harmful to Science, given that this specific spurious claim for discovery has been publicized highly in diffrent journals, in the media and many conferences. 

2) a paper that does the solid work to demonstrate that the spurious claim is unsupported will most likely be considered as "not adding significantly to the field". In other words, we can add "shit" to the field but we cannot correct and remove "shit" from the field, and in so doing teach how to develp better statistical test. Or said differently, our work which shows how to develop better statistical tests to identify the so-called "switching processes" will not be recognized as valuable. 

I hope that any editor could realize the moral hazard and wrong incentives permeative more and more the sociology of science encouraged by editors such as you (no personal attack, I know that you are just following "orders" of a general stance dictated by editorial boards of journals), in a way analogous to a graft from the scandalous behaviors observed in the financial industry.

Excuse my strong colorful words, but  think that they convey my shock and repulsion to what I consider a violation of good scientific endeavor.

Sincerely,

Prof. D. Sornette