Volume 1 Number 2                                                     November 15, 2005

 

The Source of Lake Wobegon

Richard P Phelps

EDITOR'S NOTE

Phelps submitted this article for possible publication in mid-2005, suggesting:

I'm hoping that you can send it to more than two reviewers.  This article is far too important to risk having it killed by just one flippant smart ass.

I recruited three outside reviewers and wrote one review myself. Incorporating revisions suggested by the reviewers, the article was accepted for publication in November 2005. In submitting his article for publication, Phelps included the following acknowledgment:

The author acknowledges the generous assistance and advice of four anonymous, expert reviewers, plus the advice of the TEG Review editor, Bruce R. Thompson, and that of the author of the Lake Wobegon reports, John J. Cannell. Of course, none of these several individuals is in any way responsible for any errors in this article.

Phelps commented, "I think it is very important that the acknoledgements[sic] be included in the article; without them, many will jump to the conclusion that I simply published my own paper."

Phelps expressed dissastisfaction with the conversion of the article to pdf format (the first conversion left off the the acknowledgment; the second had page number problems). Thus he converted it himself from WordPerfect and submitted a pdf version on January 25, 2006. That is the version posted here.

Later, following controversy over the Cannell article, Phelps' lawyers demanded the removal of this article. The attorneys charged that its publication was a violation of Phelps' copyright even though the version prepared by Phelps included the following notice: "© Third Education Group, Inc." It was removed during litigation but has now been restored in the interest of protecting the integrity of this journal.

Subsequently to its publication here, Phelps started his own version of the Third Education Review Readers who wish to read the article can view it on a web site run by Phelps. The version on that site is largely identical to that first published here except for the elimination of the original copyright notice, of the elimination of Thompson in the acknowledgments, the addition of two regression lines in one of the figures, and two additional paragraphs in the conclusions.

Bruce Thompson