On Sat, 17 Feb 2007 12:03:27 +0000 (UTC), Bruce Barnett
wrote:

J. Clarke writes:

As to "scientists love to debunk popular misconceptions", perhaps they
do but peer-reviewed journals are not the place in which they do it
except in the rare case that the "popular misconception" has never
before been tested.

Nonsense. There have been many misconceptions in the published journals.

Yes, there have, but most of them were not "popular misconceptions".

And some papers were groundbreaking in that they disproved these conceptions.

Such as?

I know of some examples in the field of networking and computer models.

Care to identify one "popular misconception" from that field?

As to "loving to be first with groundbreaking research", perhaps they
are, but what is at issue is not "groundbreaking research", what is at
issue is the policies of journals.

And if a groundbreaking paper is published, the journal is highly
regarded, The editors would LOVE their journal to be referenced by
thousands of other articles.

And of course the editor can tell what will be a groundbreaking paper.

In any case, global warming is the new coolness. Generally papers
that report on the status quo are not "groundbreaking".