> So then why didn't the editors suggest it for a more appropriate journal rather than call it unpublishable entirely?

Because knowledge of out-of-domain journals to which an out-of-domain paper might be appropriate is neither the role nor general competency of a journal's editors (OTOH, general familiarity with the published work in the area in which you are attempting to publish, which necessarily includes some familiarity with the venues in which works in that field are published, is part of the role and presumed competency of a researcher in any field.)

I'm not suggesting they should have said, "Resubmit this to the International Journal of Experimental Sociology." Just "Hey, this is more of a question for sociologists; maybe try that kind of journal."

Much like how Sokal criticized Social Text for not recognizing when something was a question for physicists.

Why should they have to give less direct feedback or make suggestions like that? To avoid hurting his feelings? To point him in the right direction so he knows what to do next? The author is a tenured university professor, not some high school student.

Why do you say less direct? The impression I get from the article is that none of the article actually gave a specific reason why the paper was not appropriate for the journal.

Because it is blindingly obvious that his paper had nothing even remotely connected to physics research in it.

EDIT: The second "the article" should read "the editors".

Did you know Sokal submitted his paper to several journals before getting accepted? And that he rewrote it to make it appeal to what he thought the editors would want to read? The paper wasn't even peer reviewed, so the fact that it was published is not significant at all, even though I found the discussion interesting and justified. I just think that the deception he used was not warranted and only served to generate attention and sensation.

Because (for example) I, as a physicist, didn't even know enough to immediately suggest topics like "network science, internet research, web science", and instead said the work was "sociological(?)".

For all we know from this story, the rejection letters might have suggested trying a non-physics journal. But even then, the result reported here just provides weak evidence supporting an overwhelmingly expected null hypothesis ("time travel doesn't happen"). I wouldn't expect physics journal editors to be good judges of whether a possibly novel method would be publishable in another discipline when it did not lead to a noteworthy result.

You don't have to be aware of any of that stuff in order to know the difference between "this can't be published" and "this can't be published in a physics journal".

The latter is (perhaps) good judgment; the former, a poor understanding of the limits of one's expertise.

I can't seem to find the claim in the post where the journal editors actually said "this can't be publishable, period".

I am pretty sure that when the physics journal editor rejects your paper, she isn't even actually saying "this can't be published in a physics journal", she's really saying "this can't be published in this physics journal" (unless she says otherwise, explicitly, of course).

> she isn't even actually saying

Why not go with "they aren't even actually saying" rather than the faux-affirmative-action sexism of using "she" there? This really grates with me, even more so when used with traditionally male-dominated roles, such as physicists or system administrators. Yes, you're freaking out the squares with your right-on craziness, but it's really rather childish. If you (100% rightly) want to be non-sexist, use a gender-neutral phrase, such as in my example above.

You're easily irritated, no?

Maybe I'm a girl and, try as I might to say "he" all the time (to avoid comments like yours), the one time it slips and I say "she" the Internet thinks it's all about some "femi-nazi" agenda of mine?

Chill out and talk to me about sexism/feminism/SJW when it's actually relevant (clue: not here).

Maybe. Or maybe your wording was intentional, politically motivated, and equally as out-of-place as the attention it predictably draws.

I feel bad derailing this thread further, but you know bloody nothing about me.

My comment was on-topic. grkvlt's was not, regardless of what he thinks I meant with that one pronoun (which was wrong, anyway).

Maybe you should realise that sane women, just as much as sane men, don't think pronouns will "solve" sexism. If I'm referring to a specific person, I'll be specific. If it's some random imaginary person, it's none of your bloody business what pronoun I choose.

Sure, but if I were to strip away the inflammatory comments, I'd still be left with the question of why you chose to assume the journal editor was female. Since this is unusual in the physics world, it sort of looks like you have an agenda. Therefore, it would have been more helpful to use gender neutral language, rather than simply flipping the gender over and hoping that makes up for it.

Your trolling is transparent and uninspired. 2/10.

You're assuming they actually read the paper. I'm guessing the editors simply rejected it based on the title / topic. This might be understandable, given that they probably get lots of cranks submitting similar sounding papers.

On a different note, I think you have the responsibilities of authors and editors mixed up: it is up to the author of a paper to select an appropriate journal and weigh their chances, the editor is only responsible for the quality of their own journal. Yes it would be great if they also gave you free advice about other journals, but it's really not their job.

One guess is that the average physicist, which might include both the journal editors and the author of this paper, have no clue about journals outside of physics. :)

Probably because the editors are so siloed in their physics mindset that they aren't aware that there are journals in these fields, or if they are aware, they almost certainly don't know which journals are reputable.