David Lillis: Holding Our Journals to Account

Rejecting Articles for Publication

Recently, I have been informed that a number of articles written by scientists or other researchers have been rejected for publication by New Zealand journals.  

 

Every journal has the right to decline to publish and we must accept decisions made by reviewers and, presumably, by editorial teams. However, some of these articles were intended to correct errors of scientific fact in prior articles which had indeed been published.

  

All too often, both our media and journals publish pieces of questionable scientific quality or that advance ideology rather than research, and then decline to publish the responses of scientists or other researchers. In certain New Zealand journals I have come across a number of papers or articles that do not constitute research at all and instead amount effectively to propaganda. 

 

Motivated Reasoning

Often such pieces involve “motivated reasoning”, where authors propose an ideology-based explanation for some social or political issue or perhaps for a disparity of some kind across communities. They offer only such analysis and data as align with their perspectives and then proceed to ignore the rest. We must identify and call out such material, just as we should call out those people, especially those in positions of influence, who hold misogynist or racist views. Discussion of difficult areas such as differential outcomes across communities in education, health or employment, must be purely objective, open-minded and evidence-based on all sides of the debate. 

 

For good reason we see a general tendency over decades towards increase in global investment in research, science and innovation, as governments and their private sectors invest ever more heavily in order to meet domestic challenges, but also to play a role in international collaborative efforts that aim to address global challenges.

 

We know very well what those challenges are. They include child and infant mortality; malnutrition and food insecurity; provision of clean and safe drinking water for every person, especially children in disadvantaged communities around the world; pandemics and the public health of humanity at large; climate and the environment; the need for clean, low emission and safe transport; clean and efficient manufacturing, construction and other industry; productive and low-emission agriculture, and sustainable treatment of our oceans. 

 

All research that is intended to address such critical challenges must be based on sound scientific evidence and remain free of political or ideological agendas. 

 

Traditional Knowledge has Value

Engagement between researchers and Indigenous and other minority communities may create a more open attitude to their traditional knowledge, including mātauranga Māori here in New Zealand. Of course, scientists around the world should engage with all ethnic and cultural communities, retain an open mind and embrace the contributions of minorities to policy and the setting of research agendas. Even an extreme scientist who utterly rejects all traditional knowledge as science should notice that such knowledge, including mātauranga Māori, exists beyond the boundaries of his or her own professional knowledge and raises interesting questions about the way in which we relate to our environments and think about the future and about society.  

 

For example, as citizen gardiners, we may feel a sense of uplift when we return clippings and prunings to our gardens. Apart from recycling organic material back to the environment, it feels somehow “respectful” of nature to do so. We recognize the value of mātauranga Māori in making this sort of thinking a more prominent feature of the way in which New Zealand operates and, indirectly or directly, in the way science operates. We recognize that in thinking about our gardens and their flora and fauna (associated mycorrhiza, fungi, bugs, bacteria, tree roots etc.) we are thinking relationally, that mātauranga Māori is partly about relational thinking, and finally that much of science and mathematics is also relational.

 

The trend towards “weaving” traditional knowledge and science internationally is well known and indeed some good can emerge from such collaboration. For example, flax mats for controlling duckweed are effective and flax is a natural fibre. Possibly the idea is indeed due to ancestral Māori. Of course, Indigenous people are just as likely to come up with good ideas as anyone else, but that does not make traditional knowledge equivalent to modern global science in investigating the underlying causes of observed phenomena or in the extent of verification beyond observation and trial and error. 

 

However, at all costs we must protect science from intrusion of unscientific elements of traditional knowledge and possible reduction of funding to critical areas of science, technology and medicine. We should indeed support funding to traditional knowledge and research of relevance to Indigenous and other minorities. However, the caveat here is that funding to “critical areas” must not be diminished. As an extreme example that illustrates the point – funding to research into the human immune system and novel treatments for cancer should not be reduced in order to support research into traditional or folk remedies. 

 

Science for a Better World

We live in the here and now, but if we wish to leave the world a truly better place for our children and our distant descendants, then surely there are several paths along which we must travel, and we must take those paths together. One path relates to how we behave and, of course, we must treat each other better across nations, within nations, across cultural, social, religious and ethnic communities and within our institutions and places of work. Naturally, there has never been, and never will be, any excuse for domestic abuse, especially as is applied so often to women and children. 

 

The other path involves setting free the best of research, science and innovation, and enabling the freedom that they need to address the challenges that the world faces today. However, research, science and innovation can deliver to their potential only if we

refuse to compromise on what we count as research and if we resist pressure to broaden our notions of research excellence in order to include alternative world views, ideology or political activism. 

 

Excellence must surely include clear writing, the adoption of the most advanced research methods and possibly novelty and originality. However, it must also demand objective reporting of all findings and, indeed, those findings must have emerged conformably from the relevant analysis. 

 

On the Quality of Reviewers’ Reports

Reviewers' reports shown to me are very concerning because they point to a lack of balance and objectivity. While we cannot see into the minds of reviewers, nor into the minds of editorial teams, we are forced to consider the possibility that some New Zealand journals do indeed reject articles on the basis of differences in one or other ideological perspective. If so, then this situation is deeply worrying because every journal must maintain both balance and objectivity and be willing to embrace diverse views, provided that those views hold scientific credibility. 

 

As an example, here is an anonymous comment from a well-known New Zealand senior university professor:

 

An article I submitted to the ** journal was accepted, but then rejected at a further stage of consideration because of my "ancestry" (their term). ***, to whom I complained, passed the matter back to the editor. After several months, I got a word-salad explanation, but no apology.

Setting research, science and innovation free requires public support - and an educated public at that. But we will not achieve a science-literate public if our media and our journals are not themselves unbiased or science-literate.

 

Holding our Journals to Account

Both our media and our journals should be held to account for what they publish and for what they find it inconvenient to publish. Even adherence to social justice or equity, however well-intended, is no rationale for publishing second-rate research or for presenting ideology as truth. Perhaps exposure may prompt our journals and our media to reflect on their obligation to ensure objective reporting and, indeed, on their obligations to all New Zealanders. 

Dr David Lillis trained in physics and mathematics at Victoria University and Curtin University in Perth, working as a teacher, researcher, statistician and lecturer for most of his career. He has published many articles and scientific papers, as well as a book on graphing and statistics.