Xi'an's Og

Nature of 24 October 2024 has a recollection article on the early days of peer review, following the Royal Society unsealing report from 1949 to 1954. With some mentions of well-known Bayesian characters like Jeffreys

“For a 1950 paper that discussed ‘anisotropic elastic continuum’ by mathematician James Oldroyd, geophysicist Harold Jeffreys wrote: `Knowing the author, I have confidence that the analysis is correct.’”

(albeit identified as a geophysicist) and Haldane

“A negative review [of Alan Turing’s 1951 paper] by scientist J.B.S. Haldane states: `I consider that the whole non-mathematical part should be re-written.’ A more positive opinion came from physicist Charles Galton Darwin, who said: `This paper is well worth printing, because it will convey to the biologist the possibilities of mathematical morphology.’ Still, Darwin criticized the proposed use of a “digital computer” to simulate wave theory. “The machinery is far too heavy for such a simple purpose,” Darwin argued.”

and Haldane again

“In a 1943 review by Haldane of a paper on the fecundity of Drosophila flies, the reviewer suggested cutting figures and tables, some of the discussion and, bizarrely, a short eulogy of a fly biologist.”

This entry was posted on December 15, 2024 at 12:24 am and is filed under Books, Statistics, University life with tags Alan Turing, Bayesians, Charles Darwin, eulogy, Francis Galton, geophysics, Harold Jeffreys, history of statistics, John Burdon Sanderson Haldane, Nature, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, population genetics, refereeing, Royal Society. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.