4 ms·

I thought peer review and consensus should have nothing to do with each other. Peer review is about how solid the research is, no matter the results. (At least

by vlehto 11y ago

I thought peer review and consensus should have nothing to do with each other. Peer review is about how solid the research is, no matter the results. (At least it should be.) Consensus is averaged educated guess of the experts in the field. It doesn't necessarily have anything to do with science. It has been serious problem on several fields when authority figure has strong, but false opinion. "Science advances one funeral at a time." - Max Planck And then there are things like systematic reviews in soft sciences and replications in hard sciences. These are used to find the underlying truth so that it's not biased by anybodies opinion. (At least that's what they aim at.)

ktRolster 11y ago
That sounds reasonable, but the article says it was also about demonstrating consensus: "In the 1960s, refereeing emerged as a symbol of objective judgement and consensus in science."
- tamana 11y ago
  That statement is absurd on its face, the system is designed to be subjective, not objective.
  - ktRolster 11y ago
    Your assessment would be more convincing if you had actually read the article, or even had any evidence at all to back up your point. Who are people going to believe? An article in Nature about the history of peer review, or you, who has no evidence?