The Nature article: where was the publishing threshold?

 Publishing thresholds are not spoken about very often, and they are difficult to define or to recognize in the context of actual published articles.  But they exist all right.  Broadly, every article submitted to a learned journal will have a unique publishing threshold which has to be jumped over before the publishing green light is given by the editors.  The precise positioning or height of the threshold will vary according to the originality and quality of the article, the reputations of the authors, and the potential global importance of the findings.

So an article on a rock outcrop that is interesting but not unusual, and confirming what is known already,  might have such a high publishing threshold that a high-prestige journal like "Nature" would not consider publishing it at all, leaving the way clear for publication in a local or regional geological magazine instead.   On the other hand,  an article on a meteorite ten times larger than anything previously described on Planet Earth might well be picked up enthusiastically by the editors of "Nature", with the benefit of a very low publishing threshold. Regardless of the status of the article authors, or the originality of the research, they might want it simply because global media headlines are guaranteed.

Now then -- on to the latest article on the Altar Stone. One can work out where the publishing threshold was by looking at the referees comments and the authors' responses as published here:

https://static-content.springer.com/esm/art%3A10.1038%2Fs41586-024-07652-1/MediaObjects/41586_2024_7652_MOESM3_ESM.pdf

Several things are apparent:

1.  The three referees are probably geologists, recommended to the editors by the authors themselves.

2.  The referees are in general well disposed towards the research and are broadly familiar with some of the techniques employed by the authors.

3.  The referees have a very limited knowledge of the archaeological literature.

4.  Neither the referees or the editors have any knowledge at all of the ongoing dispute between those who believe in the human transport of the bluestones and those who believe in glacial transport.

So to the text of the article.  The introductory section of the paper, on pp 570-571, is a travesty, referring  to quarries, "collection and transport" of the bluestones, the Altar Stone arrival,  the "sea transport route" and "the connectivity of Neolithic people."  It is implied throughout that the human transport of the bluestones from Preseli to Stonehenge is universally accepted as the truth, and there is no mention of the fact that the ideas published by Bevins, Ixer, Parker Pearson, Pitts and others are hotly disputed in the peer reviewed literature.  This is all accepted by the editors and reviewers without question.............

Fast forward to the concluding part of the paper: 

"......... we posit that the Altar Stone was anthropogenically transported to Stonehenge from northeast Scotland, consistent with evidence of Neolithic inhabitation in this region. Whereas the igneous bluestones were brought around 225 km from the Mynydd Preseli to Stonehenge (Fig. 4a), a Scottish provenance for the Altar Stone demands a transport distance of at least 750 km (Fig. 4a)."

Reviewer 3 is very concerned about this extraordinary claim, and is not really convinced that there is enough extraordinary evidence to support it; but he (she?) eventually accepts the arguments of the authors that their reasoning is sound.  The discussion is instructive, and is very concerning because it is so misleading. The authors say, in their own defence:

The Sarsen stones (which weigh >25 tonnes) were transported from the West Woods, Marlborough, 25 km from Stonehenge (Nash et al. 2020).

The Mynydd Preseli bluestones (which weigh 2 – 4 tonnes) were transported ~240 km to Salisbury Plain from SW Wales (Parker Pearson et al. 2021).

Neolithic Britons demonstrably had the technology and knowledge to carry multi-tonne cargo across challenging terrain.

Those claims are self-serving and disingenuous, and all are disputed in the literature.  Nonetheless, eventually Reviewer 3 accepts the assurances of reliability, and goes along with the others in recommending publication.

To conclude:

So where was the publishing threshold?  Answer:  much, much lower than it should have been.  

The reviewers are clearly influenced by the assurance that the long-distance transport of bluestones over sea or land was exceptional but not impossible, since it is already known (so say the authors) that they moved 80 bluestones over 225 kms from Preseli to Stonehenge.  If the referees had been properly  informed that the human transport of the bluestones was and is hotly disputed, they would have been much more sceptical about the 750km journey proposed for the Altar Stone.  The publication threshold would have been a great deal higher. Almost certainly the authors would not have been allowed to get away with 4 surrogate samples rather than actual ones.  And the referees would have looked for much stronger evidence to support the proposition that the Altar Stone could not possibly have come from any of the alternative ORS terranes examined by the authors.

All very dodgy indeed..........