Capitalism, or rather: free enterprise-based production, is among the (Western) achievements that are well worth defending.
However, its blessings can only flourish under conditions, and it is certainly not the individual entrepreneurs themselves who defend those conditions. Certainly not the monstrously large corporations whose leadership has little or no affinity with the actual processes of production.
Corporate production certainly does not protect other achievements such as freedom of expression and scientific practice worthy of the name.
An extraordinarily clear and painful illustration of the latter was given 15 years ago by an international, scientific, peer-reviewed, journal; a publication of Elsevier.
It is incredible but true: that journal did not concern social or political science, but Cardiology, and the example very definitely did not concern commercial but political interests. The implicit claim that this article was peer-reviewed screams what peers?
The image of medical science was knowingly tarnished by Elsevier by including in this scientific journal this snippet of propaganda for Islam: The heart and cardiovascular system in the Qur’an and Hadeeth.
Lead time
The superiority of scholarship over other forms of knowledge acquisition and dissemination lies in welcoming criticism, in other words: in focusing on the content of what is written or spoken rather than on the authority of the writer or speaker.
I quote here from a Plea for non-peer reviewing, a text from 2012.
One of the reasons that non-peer reviewing was commanded is the fact that peer reviewing is simply very time-consuming.
That is, when the review really is supposed to be critical.
Reviews should always be critical, but are not always critical to a sufficient degree.
Peer reviewing, of course, is better than no reviewing at all 1).
Peer-reviewing, however, not only takes a lot of work hours for the reviewer but also has a long lead time.
Two examples from that very cardiology journal show that it can really add up.
Metabolism and the heart: A review of muscle, fat and bone metabolism in heart failure: Received March 8, 2011; received in revised form Sept. 14, 2011; accepted Sept. 17, 2011. (In hard copy: January 2013.)
Sometimes the lead time is even longer. Factors of importance for patients’ decision time in acute coronary syndrome: “Received 2 July 2008; accepted 29 November 2008. (Published on paper: June 2010.)
For the propaganda story for mohammedanism, the turnaround time -see image at top- for the reviewing process was almost zero:
Received May 7, 2009; accepted May 12, 2009.
Criticism did come, but only after an extended period of time, and it produced no “retraction” and no response from Elsevier.
Worse, a short time later they published this: Islamic Legacy of Cardiology: Inspirations from the holy sources.
Its summary begins thus:
The main source of all inspirational knowledge in Islam is indeed the Holy Qur’an. The verses of the Qur’an as well as the Hadeeth and Sunnah literature have also accumulated a number of teachings and practices in relation to cardiovascular medicine. Islam is actually a comprehensive system of life, which provides mankind with the best forms of balance between the mundane and the spiritual.
Can science be more perverted?
Perhaps when a journal of astronomy published an article by Melchior Inchofer about Galileo or about Giordo Bruno without any comment 2)
April’s fools day or: how bad is it?
One can wonder how damaging the behavior of Elsevier/these journal editors is.
Optimistically, one might assume that surely no scientist worthy of that designation will take this kind of article seriously.
Certainly most will not read it. How many people did even notice it?
The editors, by neatly mentioning those dates, have also already hinted that these snippets are not to be taken seriously. The good listener understands that these are advertorials.
Moreover, the first of these two articles appeared in print on April 1!
But although I usually speak and write in a rather optimistic fashion I do not share the optimism outlined above.
Shortly after the article The heart and cardiovascular system appeared in print, Jihadwatch paid extensive attention to it. Especially worthy of close study are the reactions of several excellently informed commenters.
Respondent “Livingengine” cites an article by Daniel Golden in The Wall Street Journal. Pay particular attention to that Zindani guy: a good example of a crony of Mohammed who is not stupid and, more importantly, operates on a long-term agenda. Something that many ‘critics of Islam critics ‘ simply can’t seem to imagine 3).
I wrote a Dutch version of this article in 2013. That was also about non-Jewish declarations by a dredging company and about Sigmund Freud’s late and unusual escape from Nazism in 1938. Hopefully I find time to translate and update those parts too, soon.
Notes:
- See also this video and really long text about Placebo Punishments -yes you read that correctly-
- 2) See also The Trial of Galileo: An Account, by professor Douglas O, Linder.
- 3) I wrote more extensively about these issues in Dutch: Unfortunately, not all of Muhammad’s cronies are retarded.