January 21, 2008

Dear Dr. Joós,

I am delighted to see that you published Mr. Jay Ingram’s plenary address to CAP’s 2007 Congress (“Raising Scientific Literacy (or Bamboo under my Fingernails),” Physics in Canada 63, 3, (July-September 2007)) and made it freely available. However I am concerned about the absence of references and the apparent lack of critical review. Readers of a scholarly journal such as Physics in Canada expect the same rigorous standards to be applied to all articles they read, regardless of content.

A quick examination of the article reveals the following weaknesses:

1. The first quote by C.P. Snow could be attributed as follows: C. P. Snow, The Two Cultures and a Second Look (Cambridge University Press, New York, 1965), p. 107.

2. The article attributed to Morris Shamos (p. 110) is not from The Scientist, but from The Sciences : M. Shamos, The Sciences 28, 14 (1988), p. 19.

3. The reference to a one-percent increase in level of understanding stem cells during the 2005 election could be attributed to Liza Gross (L. Gross, PLoS Biology 4, 680 (2006)).

4. The article attributed to “Paul Bloom in Science” (p. 111) should read “Paul Bloom and Deena Skolnick Weisberg” (P. Bloom and D.S. Weisberg, Science 316, 996 (2007).

5. The article about intuitive physics is by Michael McCloskey and not Michael McElroy (M. McCloskey, Scientific American 248, 122 (1983)).

I have not corrected the reference to the National Post editorials on global warming, nor to Jon Miller’s paper delivered at the AAAS meeting, since I am unsure if it was “Public Understanding of Science: Are Europeans Better at it?” (delivered Feb. 15, 2007), or “Civic Scientific Literacy across the Life Cycle” (delivered Feb. 17, 2007).

Mr. Ingram is a role model for young scientists. Presenting his article in Physics in Canada surely adds value and prestige to your publication. However, any article you publish must maintain the scientific standards of a scholarly work.

Sincerely,

Debbie Chaves
(Ph.D. Biophysics)
Wilfred Laurier University
dchaves [at] wlu [dot] ca