[From Rick Marken (2000.09.21.0730)]
Here are some of the reviewer comments on the _Chemotaxis_
paper. I'm just picking things that were fairly substantive
and that are clearly false or misleading. There were other
little nits, some of which were correct, such as "mistake
in equation ..." and "not consistent with APA style" but
I'll just mention some of the big errors. They are a bit
cryptic -- I am basically quoting from the reviews -- but
I didn't want to waste too much time on this.
1) E. coli navigating up a gradient, humans navigating up
a gradient and pigeons pecking a key are not equivalent.
All three produce consequences but so does leaf falling from
a tree.
2) Cause and effect cannot occur at the same time.
3) Humans don't have control over direction after a button
press but they do have control over whether or not to push
button. "Button pressing" in E. coli (tumbling) is automatic
and occurs in fixed relationship to gradient.
4) Humans take a longer time to learn the control strategy
than E. coli.
5) The consequence of an interval lasting a certain length
of time _can_ influence the length of that interval, contrary
to what the authors say.
The reviewers were trying to help us understand reinforcement
dogma. They thought we didn't understand how reinforcement
really works. The fact is that the reviewers had no idea
what we were doing (one reviewer was quite up front about this);
Our paper could have been a message from another world, as far
as they were concerned. But they were generally polite -- if a
tad pompous -- about it.
It turns out that the bottom line basis for Domjan's final
rejection of the paper was completely mundane and appropriate.
The data collected in the paper is based on the behavior of
humans and JEP: Animal Behavior Processes focuses the behavior
of non-human animals. Of course, it might have been nice to
mention this _before_ we went through the time consuming
review process (none of the reviewers voiced this objection).
But it is certainly a reasonable basis for rejection.
Best
Rick
ยทยทยท
--
Richard S. Marken Phone or Fax: 310 474-0313
MindReadings.com mailto: marken@mindreadings.com
www.mindreadings.com