Journal of Cosmology

The Journal of Cosmology is a supposedly-scientific journal.About the Journal, Journal of Cosmology, accessed 7 March 2011 (archived by WebCite®) It was established in 2009, and, despite a press release claiming they were storming out in a huff as of May 2011,Journal of Cosmology To Stop Publishing—Killed by Thieves and Crooks, Lana Tao, 14 February 2011, reproduced in Journal of Cosmology Going Out with Big Bang, 'David Dobbs's Somatic Marker (Archive.org) is publishing to the present. With a completely misleading name, it is a source for cranks as "proof" of pseudoscience claims.
In his comments on the 2011 "bacteria in a meteorite" brouhaha, PZ Myers described it thus: "the ginned-up website of a small group of crank academics obsessed with the idea of Hoyle and that life originated in outer space and simply rained down on Earth."http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2011/03/06/did-scientists-discover-bacter/ Unsurprisingly, it is not in fact peer reviewed,http://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2013/01/20/totally-unsurprising/ despite claiming to be. It also has remarkably fast turnaround times — with as little as 10 days between the actual experiment and final publication.The Thought Stash — Scientists: how long does it typically take between data collection and paper acceptance?
==Editorial board==
The "About" page of the website lists the following people under "Editors" (academic titles are skipped):
* (as "Editor-in-Chief" and "Executive Editor," perhaps of Astronomy, Astrophysics; the page spells his first name as "Rudolf")
*Carl H. Gibson ("Executive Editor")
*John McKim Malville ("Executive Editor")
*Michael Russell ("Executive "Guest" Editor")
*Joel S. Levine ("Executive "Guest" Editor")
* ("Executive Editor")
* ("Executive Editor")
*Lana Tao ("Senior Executive Managing Director")
* ("Executive "Guest" Editor"… WTF???)
Lana Tao (or someone pretending to be her) appeared and defended tried to defend the journal in a forum thread at the Bad Astronomy and Universe Today Forum that questioned its "seriousness."Journal of Cosmology, Bad Astronomy and Universe Today Forum thread
==Publications==
The journal issued its first volume in September 2009. It contained a single original paper — a panspermia article by Rhawn Joseph.Life on Earth Came From Other Planets, Rhawn Joseph (archived by WebCite®) (The rest of Volume 1 are comments and a reprint of an article by was one of the people invited to review the article, but his review was met with, again, ad hominem attacks by "the editor," who accused him "in emotion-drenched terms, of defaming and insulting Dr. Joseph."An "explanation" for life's origins that falls way short, Sentient Developments, 23 September 2009 (includes the unpublished text of the review) PZ Myers directly called the article "complete garbage."An amusingly suspicious “paper”, Pharyngula, 23 July 2009
Since then, the journal has published more articles by Rhawn Joseph, who also has problems with the "myth of the Big Bang."The Infinite Universe vs the Myth of the Big Bang: Red Shifts, Black Holes, Acceleration, Life., Rhawn Joseph, Journal of Cosmology, Volume 6, January 2010
The whole of Volume 4 was devoted to quantum consciousness.
===Bacteria in a meteorite?===
*http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2011/03/05/has-life-been-found-in-a-meteorite/
*http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2011/03/aliens-riding-meteorites-arsenic-redux-or-something-new/
"Fossils of Cyanobacteria in CI1 Carbonaceous Meteorites" by Richard Hoover, Ph.D. With Commentaries (archived by WebCite®)
===My porn is science, dammit!===
In the summer of 2011, the journal published an article by Rhawn Joseph entitled "Sexual Consciousness: The Evolution of Breasts, Buttocks and the Big Brain." PZ Myers made funThe hubba-hubba theory of human evolution, Pharyngula, 14 June 2011 of the article's thesis and the random images of naked women that it contained. Some other people were not happy about it either, because the article was retracted moved to Rhawn Joseph's site (BrainMind.com) and its original page got replaced with a whiny rant decrying "censorship."Censored Article: The Evolution of Sexual Consciousness, Journal of Cosmology
At the same time, cosmology.com published a long, uh, "satire" against PZ Myers, interspersed with Photoshopped images of Myers' head attached to the bodies of obese women in skimpy clothing.Professional science journalism, Pharyngula, 20 July 2011 While it has been removed from the front page, the rant still exists as a sub-page of cosmology.com,This Special Edition of Cosmology.com is in Honor of P. Z. Myers: Professional Crackpot, Hate-Monger, and Ignorant Lard Ass though it repeatedly asserts that cosmology.com is not connected to the Journal of Cosmology. There's a little problem with that claim, though — both sites also very obviously share the same web designer with BrainMind.com, someone who loves 1990s-era static HTML and large background pictures of nebulae.
==See also==
*Galileo gambit
*John Brandenburg
==External links==
*Journal of Cosmology
*Microbes on a Moonbeam: Disentangling the Meteorite Microbe Claims, Leila Battison's impressions from the meteorite paper and the publishing process at the journal
==References==
Cosmology
Category:Pseudoscience