Dear Oliver Braddick,
I am writing to you because you are a member of the editorial board of Current Biology, with expertise in the area of visual systems. The subject is what is in effect censorship in Current Biology, where a dissenting opinion is blocked from publication just because it is dissenting.
I am sure that you are aware of the noninvasive brain scanning methods (PET and fMRI) and that they are hoped to be extremely useful in understanding the working of the brain, by telling us what is happening where. What you may not be aware of is that significant portion of the conclusions that are drawn from PET and fMRI studies are based on implausible assumptions and irreproducible data. Even worse, researchers in the area do what they can to suppress discussion of these assumptions.
The case in the next page is an example, where my comments that discuss these assumptions, in a response to an article in Current Biology, were blocked from publication, by `reviews' that are not really reviews. Since the assumptions that I discuss in my comments are central to interpreting PET and fMRI results, with large implication for neuroscience and cognitive science, it is critical that their validity will be discussed and verify. Therefore I ask you to help me get my comments published.
Yehouda Harpaz
The case:
In August, Howard et al publish an article in Current Biology claiming `A direct demonstration of functional specialization within motion-related visual and auditory cortex of the human brain.' [photocopy attached]. This would be quite an important discovery if it was true. However, the claim is based on far-reaching overinterpretation of the data, and the data itself is irreproducible. In fact, the authors themselves admit they could not reproduce their own previous results.
I sent Current Biology a single page of comments about this article, highlighting some of the unsupported and implausible assumptions that Howard et al make, and also raising the question of reproducibility [attached]. This went to a `reviewer', which `reviewed' it and recommended not to publish [first `review']. The deputy editor (Geoffrey North) rejected my comments based on this review.
However, reading the `review', it was clear that the reviewer did not actually read my comments. I Wrote to the deputy editor, showing clearly how the `reviewer' skip parts of my comments, and when he did not, his answers are not serious [response to first `review']. The deputy editor still refuse to go any further.
I then contacted the editor (Peter Newmark), and convinced him that the `review' is not a review. He agreed to send it to a serious review.
The second `reviewer' wrote much more, and was careful to look serious [second `review']. However, it is still a nonsense. The evidence he claims to bring is irrelevant, he distorts my text, the `review' is full of misleading statements and in places degenerates to plain demagogy. In contrast to the first `review', the nonsenseness of this `review' is not trivially obvious, but my response [response to second `review'] make it clear, even to a non-expert.
However, the editor refused to accept this. In a telephone conversation, he claimed that he is not an expert, so cannot judge the claim that the second `review' is nonsense, and is not ready to look at it any further. Thus, my comments were rejected not because there was anything wrong with them, but because the `reviewers' did not like them, and allow themselves to write nonsense as `reviews'.
Attached:
1) Original article by Howard et al
2) My comments.
3) first `review'
4) My response to the first `review'
5) second `review'
6) My response to the second `review'