In a letter to The New York Times, Cornell physics professor Paul Ginsparg wrote that the contrast between the cases was plainly evident: "here, the authors were evidently aiming to be credentialed by the intellectual prestige of the discipline rather than trying to puncture any intellectual pretension." He added that the fact some journals and scientific institutions have low or variable standards is "hardly a revelation". The observation was later confirmed by studies showing that high-prestige journals struggle to reach average reliability.