Really, an explanation as to how something that looked like a peer-reviewed journal could publish something that looks so bad. Explanations I can think of include:
- this isn't really a peer-reviewed journal in the sense I understand it (nobody critically read the paper ever, or they did but nobody forced the author to rewrite); or
- actually it isn't as bad as I think, e.g. because someone who worked in the field and understood the conventions of the field would be able to see things that to them are obvious explanations of the discrepancies reported here.
Of these the first seems the more likely, but maybe I'm wrong or maybe there's another explanation I haven't thought of. I'd just like to know!
FWIW, the site I pulled it from classified it as a magazine. The guidelines for authors indicated that everything is peer-reviewed, so at least one or two people read it and approved of it. From my perspective, this reflects poorly on the publication.
It's hard for me to see a legitimate way around the lack of things that I listed in my last message (study design, data, etc.). If people who work in this field were to argue that their conventions don't require any of those things, I'd question the validity of their research even more. Unfortunately, from what I've seen, standards in the education field can be very low ("can be," not "always;" obviously not making a blanket statement about everyone here).
Val
