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Should it be a big embarrassment for Phys. Rev. Lett., a big dip in their reputation?

The whole point of respectable journals is that they filter out bad quality papers.



Yes, I think so. As Baez says, it suggests the paper wasn't reviewed by experts in the subject. But that is the point of peer review, so seems to be very sloppy work by the journal


That should be the real issue.

Bluntly, science journalism is not that well paid and most people won't have given the articles he calls out more than a moments thought. Of course journalists are going to be lazy if they aren't paid not to be. (Which is a problem itself, but I don't see many people advocating for better paid science journalists).

But journals should be a kind of guard rail against that. If their peer reviewers were too lazy to find experts or too arrogant to admit they didn't understand what they were reviewing, then that is a real problem.




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