[Alamo-Girl]

And the reasons such first-pass "jurors" give for declining publication are so spurious and unreasonable as to be laughable. Indeed, one could laugh -- if what is actually going on here were not so very serious.

So very, very true! As I recall, at least one Nobel prize was awarded to a frequently rejected innovator. I'd go look for name or names, but I must tend to some chores and such.

I also agree with you that Darwinism needs to make predictions about the future of species and needs more methods of falsification. At the moment, the original "randomness" tenet of the theory is rarely mentioned evidently because recent discoveries of regulatory control genes indicate many mutations were not by happenstance.

Perhaps the newer theories of autonomous biological self-organizing complexity will eventually replace the "random mutation + natural selection = species" formula.

[PatrickHenry]

Darwinism needs to make predictions about the future of species ...

That's about as difficult as predicting the future history of America. But if you can tell me what environmental changes will occur, I can make general predictions as to what will be the result -- if the environment changes slowly to allow evolution to take place. We do see some changes with predictable results. Where the climate is becoming more dry (or wet), there are observed changes in vegetation. What had been adapted to live there dies out, and better-adapted species take hold. The fossil record, and the geological record, tell us what's happened in the past. I can't predict the future. If the changes are gradual, life will probably adapt. But no one can tell you what, say, horses will look like in a million years.

[Alamo-Girl]

Good evening! I found the article I was thinking about earlier that speaks of Nobel scientists whose work had been previously rejected by peer-reviewed journals:

Refereed Journals: Do they ensure quality or enforce orthodoxy?

Rosalyn Yalow, Gunter Blobel, Mitchell Feigenbaum and Theodore Maiman are examples. Notably, Einstein was published three times without peer review. I wonder if he would have also been placed in the reject pile if there was peer-review in his day...