*Facepalm*
Legitimate rebuttals to published findings don't always take the form of peer reviewed papers written specifically to counter a given study. As a matter of fact, I'm not certain any researcher ever sets out with the intent of doing so from the very beginning; the few examples I see of peer reviewed papers rebutting a prior study are original studies that, after having been undertaken, happened to have been shown to contradict prior works (those studies are published in order to add to the accumulation of knowledge and allow metastudies to really determine the state of knowledge). Legitimate rebuttals are not restricted to peer review at all. One of the other entirely accepted (emphasis:
Accepted i.e. already acknowledged as legitimate) methods of critique are specifically what Sunstealer did: Compose a work demonstrating a study's inherent flaws and use the data provided to reinterpret the authors' conclusions.
You want an example of a study being refuted without a direct, refereed rebuttal paper being published? Look at the Andrew Wakefield debacle. Were any of the critiques published peer-reviewed studies conducted in direct rebuttal? No; they were they the cumulation of critiques gathered in various venues that added up to the field rejecting the work. Remember: The Lancet ended up acknowledging the refutations. The medical community rejects it. But no refereed paper ever was written for the purpose of direct refutation. Rather, it failed in the face of already existent evidence.
Just like the Bentham paper.
The point is that when people like Steven Jones were challenged to publish in legit scientific venues (oh, how I rue forgetting to use the word "legitimate" back in 2006 when I was one of the people saying this!) it's because
he was the one claiming he conducted experiments and made discoveries. Because he was a scientist, he was challenged to raise the level of discourse by attempting validation via refereed publication. But no other truthers were following commonly accepted academic practices at the time.
And now that they have an ersatz paper to push, suddenly they're all about peer review.
But for rebuttals. Once again, they're demonstrating an ignorance of standard academic practices.
The people here calling on Sunstealer to publish his findings are ignorant of academic practice. The only oddity about his critique is that he did not address it to Bentham's letters to the Editor directly, and after Ryan Mackey's experience with that:
... is there any wonder that he didn't try?
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One last thing: When Jones was challenged to take his claims to peer review, there was also an accompanying critique of the actual "findings". Why am I not surprised that on the truther side there's only the call, incorrect as it is, to go to publication? Doesn't it say something that they don't even try to take on the argument itself? To me, that says a
lot.