In Reply to: Re: For Gawds sake people lets get some perspective posted by jim matthews on February 14, 2006 at 21:29:16:

There are over 8000 journals listed in Science Citation Index, some of them more reputable than others. A scientist with an important finding - such as ADHD being a figment of people's imagination will undoubtedly submit his or her findings to the top four or five journals in that field. Science and Nature between them get 20 to 30,000 papers per annum with less than 10% being accepted. Less than half even go to the peer review process. The rest go down the ranks to lesser journals - of which there are still plenty. If the finding is as important as our video salesmean appears to think it is I find it highly improbable that it would not have appeared in at least one high impact journal by now that someone on this board can find?

In the nature of it books do not receive anything like the peer review that journal papers do. there is absolutely no way that books published even by the big academic names are peer reviewed in the same manner. In fact the author is lucky if they are even edited for basic English- never mind scientific content. and if you have submitted a book for publication and have received comments from three or four referees as you would in a normal peer-reviewed international journal I would be very interested to know the nae of the publisher!

The point though was that - fine if an author of a book has a string of important journal papers supporting his thesis - but if not it's likely that he's just one of too many cranks with bees in their bonnets that are merely publisher fodder.

The last point about prozac not having a physical basis is even more contentious than ritalin.

BTW there's nothing wrong with researching on the web. Very few university departments use anything else nowadays. All the major journals have long since gone electronic. In fact you will get the electronic version of your paper well in advance of the printed version even if the journal is still producing a printed version.