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Re: [xmca] Trying to stop the strands from unravelling



Hi David and Mike,
what is good about xmca also is bad about xmca, what is good about mca is also bad. 

I think that MCA serves a need that Mike wanted to address when he moved from the newsletter to a formal journal. People now get credit at their institutions, and this is good. Of course, we have to go through peer review . . . or companies might just pull the plug as Elsevier has done with Medical Hypotheses, which published unreviewed articles with the outcome that some were promoting extreme views on AIDS and other issues. Similarly, on xmca one can say things that does not hold up water in a paper, and this is what is good about MCA, that people can't just say anything but have to argue tightly. You can't just yack, which is what happens here at times.

David and others (Andy in an upcoming commentary) that I personally do not agree with, and yet we publish it as a commentary.

So, to contradict Mike a bit, there is a place in MCA to blow off: COMMENTARIES----David did so not too long ago----but we also distinguish those pieces from reviewed articles, precisely we want those who choose MCA as their outlet to get credit at their home institutions. And, we don't want MCA to be like xmca, because then we would only need one of the two not both. And xmca is archived, you can print it if you want. 

Cheers,
Michael


On Sat, Apr 24, 2010 at 4:10 PM, mike cole <lchcmike@gmail.com> wrote:
I agree with your characterization of xmca and mca, David. Working to make
the second as much like the first as possible, and really liked the old
Newsletter method, but lost out to the younger generation.... it were ever
so.

> On Sat, Apr 24, 2010 at 3:08 PM, David Kellogg <vaughndogblack@yahoo.com>wrote:
>> I think that MCA and xmca are very different, and I am always sorry but
>> not really surprised when told by reviewers that I can be a peer in one but
>> not the other. I like to think of myself as primarily a researcher and only
>> secondarily a kvetch, but my record says otherwise.

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