[vsnet-chat 7598] peer review

[substelor at Safe-mail.net]

English, in England at least, evolves at a remarkale rate, with colloquial use of words and terms ever changing in their meaning, and at times rarely being used in their original, formal or technical sense during day to day speech.

For example, you find sometimes the comment that papers and journals are not refereed, that is examined by some acknowledged authority on the (sub)discipline, but "peer reviewed".

Basically, although it is sometimes used synonymously with the term 'refereed', this more properly means to be reviewed by ones peers.  Ones peers are ones equals within a social grouping.  In other words, the paper was examined by equals.

White dwarfs highlight another aspect of similar but different meanings.  They consist of degenerate matter, the degeneracy being defined in the mathematical sense such that the atoms within the white dwarf are at a common level, very loosely all are within an equal state, such that sometimes you will even see a white dwarf defined as a "superatom".  Stretching it a little it could be said that all atoms within the crystalline lattice of a white dwarf interior are at an equal state, so these degenerate things are to some extent equal.

Does this mean, then, that journals using refereeing have papers that have been examined by those capable of having some authority on the subject, whilst peer reviewed journals have papers that have been looked at by a bunch of degenerates?

John