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The blog indicates this quite clearly and is speaking of only the formal, modern and monetized usage of it. Science itself is basically useless without some ty

The blog indicates this quite clearly and is speaking of only the formal, modern and monetized usage of it. Science itself is basically useless without some type of peer review in whatever form.

kobeya 9y ago
What I'm taking issue with is this: > But even if peer review is ancient, "peer review" itself is quite new. Google charts about the history of usage of a particular grouping of terms is not definitive evidence about the history of the underlying activity named by that phrase. Peer review is indeed ancient and fundamental to science and scientific progress. It just may not have been talked about as broadly or referred to under different names before then. It's hard to draw more than linguistic trivia out of that. It's especially bad to make policy suggestions based on that.
- cwyers 9y ago
  But that's the author's point. This current thing we call peer review isn't what's fundamental to science, the broader concept is. The modern for-profit journal system is not the only way to do science, and just because it cloaks itself in the name "peer review" doesn't make it the only sort of peer review that facilitates good science.
  - trapperkeeper74 9y ago
    There are three activities: - critical feedback on papers - hypermonetization (and deleterious siloing) of works often produced with government grants, leading to primarily academics only having ready access to papers, whom don’t see the subscription costs as a burden to them. - disseminating only papers meeting a threshold to maintain quality of the journal Maybe scientists and academics should seek to create and use equivalent quality peer / committee adversalism but publish in open forum that operates based on donations. Academia seems currently over-commercialised: industry getting cheap labor, undergrads going into debt and journals, law libraries and textbook companies making a killing by locking up knowledge behind a paywall. Research papers and case law should be available to the most people as possible for little or no cost.
    - dnautics 9y ago
      Why the emphasis on money? The structural organization of science as a hierarchical enterpise with gatekeepers to advancement will result in these problems regardless of funding or commercialization.
      - AstralStorm 9y ago
        Tying funding to it makes them much more acute though. Essentially forcing you to play by these rules in order to live. Without being forced like this, many deadbeat fake journals would die and places like arxiv would flourish.
      - marcosdumay 9y ago
        That organization itself is a consequence of the funding policy. There's nothing else pushing scientists into a hierarchy, or at least nothing nearly as strong.
  - kobeya 9y ago
    Maybe I've missed the author's point, but you've also missed mine. The fact that the phrase "peer review" dates to the 1970's doesn't mean the concept wasn't in use before. It was just called something else ("refereeing" as someone else in this thread pointed out). Also, the sharp discontinuity in 1970-1980 is suspiciously close to the wide-scale deployment of computers. Probably has a lot more to do with data-availability biases in the corpus used by Google to construct these ngrams data sets from the transition to digital in industry and publishing.
    - dnautics 9y ago
      "Peer review" originally meant the scientific concept of reviewing your peers, formally or otherwise. Currently that is not the dominant usage. For example, perelmans proof of the poincare theorem is not "peer reviewed" in the contemporary parlance because it was dumped on arxiv, and not published in a journal with a structured system of presumptive validation. It would be silly to claim that his work is not/will not be reviewed by his peers -- "peer review" in the classic sense.
      - KGIII 9y ago
        I'm a bit older than most people here. I mention that because it may be relevant. I'm entirely unfamiliar with the work you mentioned. So, I'm going to use just your description of events and work with that. I'd say that their work was currently under review. After people have reviewed it and written about it, I'd say it was peer reviewed. Once it had been heavily reviewed, I'd probably say it had been formally peer reviewed. Had it gone through a journal, I'd simply say it was reviewed prior to publication. After publication would be where I'd call it peer reviewed, after it has been published and commented on. Pre-publication review isn't very rigorous. I really don't put much emphasis on that. To me, peer review happens post publication. Formal peer review would be when there is enough interest for people to make a concerted effort to replicate and dig deep into the findings to seek flaws. General Relativity would be formally peer reviewed. The paper you mention would be undergoing peer review. I am not asserting that my thinking is correct. I am mentioning this because I see a difference and I think your use of 'currently' may be very important in understanding this. In 1970, I would attend a reputable prep school. I would not complete my doctorate until 1991. So, I suspect you're onto something with your use of 'currently.' If I understand your comment about the proof of the Poincare Theorem correctly, I'd say that it is (likely) being currently peer reviewed. To try to sum this word salad up, I don't see prepublication review as peer review in the scientific sense. To my mind, that happens after publication and with varied levels of formality. So, I suspect you're onto something when you mention current usage. Sorry for the novella and rambling nature of my post.
- KGIII 9y ago
  Latin and French were the languages of science for quite a while. Arabic before that and Greek before that. This is ignoring Eastern science intentionally. They searched for 'peer review.' I don't see any indication that they searched in other languages, what those phrases might be, and how they accounted for that. Well, that and it looks like they are conflating two ideas. They appear to be speaking about more modern journals and ignoring that philosophers shared and published their work, sought students, and held their findings up for scrutiny. So, not just the phrase part that you mention, but also the language used may impact this. I have no idea how to say peer review in either French or Latin and I am a scientist.
  - kobeya 9y ago
    Also German, for a short but meaningful period of time at least. Most of modern physics was originally published in German, for example.

The blog indicates this quite clearly and is speaking of only the formal, modern and monetized usage of it. Science itself is basically useless without some type of peer review in whatever form.

kobeya 9y ago

What I'm taking issue with is this: > But even if peer review is ancient, "peer review" itself is quite new. Google charts about the history of usage of a particular grouping of terms is not definitive evidence about the history of the underlying activity named by that phrase. Peer review is indeed ancient and fundamental to science and scientific progress. It just may not have been talked about as broadly or referred to under different names before then. It's hard to draw more than linguistic trivia out of that. It's especially bad to make policy suggestions based on that.

cwyers 9y ago
But that's the author's point. This current thing we call peer review isn't what's fundamental to science, the broader concept is. The modern for-profit journal system is not the only way to do science, and just because it cloaks itself in the name "peer review" doesn't make it the only sort of peer review that facilitates good science.
- trapperkeeper74 9y ago
  There are three activities: - critical feedback on papers - hypermonetization (and deleterious siloing) of works often produced with government grants, leading to primarily academics only having ready access to papers, whom don’t see the subscription costs as a burden to them. - disseminating only papers meeting a threshold to maintain quality of the journal Maybe scientists and academics should seek to create and use equivalent quality peer / committee adversalism but publish in open forum that operates based on donations. Academia seems currently over-commercialised: industry getting cheap labor, undergrads going into debt and journals, law libraries and textbook companies making a killing by locking up knowledge behind a paywall. Research papers and case law should be available to the most people as possible for little or no cost.
  - dnautics 9y ago
    Why the emphasis on money? The structural organization of science as a hierarchical enterpise with gatekeepers to advancement will result in these problems regardless of funding or commercialization.
    - AstralStorm 9y ago
      Tying funding to it makes them much more acute though. Essentially forcing you to play by these rules in order to live. Without being forced like this, many deadbeat fake journals would die and places like arxiv would flourish.
    - marcosdumay 9y ago
      That organization itself is a consequence of the funding policy. There's nothing else pushing scientists into a hierarchy, or at least nothing nearly as strong.
- kobeya 9y ago
  Maybe I've missed the author's point, but you've also missed mine. The fact that the phrase "peer review" dates to the 1970's doesn't mean the concept wasn't in use before. It was just called something else ("refereeing" as someone else in this thread pointed out). Also, the sharp discontinuity in 1970-1980 is suspiciously close to the wide-scale deployment of computers. Probably has a lot more to do with data-availability biases in the corpus used by Google to construct these ngrams data sets from the transition to digital in industry and publishing.
  - dnautics 9y ago
    "Peer review" originally meant the scientific concept of reviewing your peers, formally or otherwise. Currently that is not the dominant usage. For example, perelmans proof of the poincare theorem is not "peer reviewed" in the contemporary parlance because it was dumped on arxiv, and not published in a journal with a structured system of presumptive validation. It would be silly to claim that his work is not/will not be reviewed by his peers -- "peer review" in the classic sense.
    - KGIII 9y ago
      I'm a bit older than most people here. I mention that because it may be relevant. I'm entirely unfamiliar with the work you mentioned. So, I'm going to use just your description of events and work with that. I'd say that their work was currently under review. After people have reviewed it and written about it, I'd say it was peer reviewed. Once it had been heavily reviewed, I'd probably say it had been formally peer reviewed. Had it gone through a journal, I'd simply say it was reviewed prior to publication. After publication would be where I'd call it peer reviewed, after it has been published and commented on. Pre-publication review isn't very rigorous. I really don't put much emphasis on that. To me, peer review happens post publication. Formal peer review would be when there is enough interest for people to make a concerted effort to replicate and dig deep into the findings to seek flaws. General Relativity would be formally peer reviewed. The paper you mention would be undergoing peer review. I am not asserting that my thinking is correct. I am mentioning this because I see a difference and I think your use of 'currently' may be very important in understanding this. In 1970, I would attend a reputable prep school. I would not complete my doctorate until 1991. So, I suspect you're onto something with your use of 'currently.' If I understand your comment about the proof of the Poincare Theorem correctly, I'd say that it is (likely) being currently peer reviewed. To try to sum this word salad up, I don't see prepublication review as peer review in the scientific sense. To my mind, that happens after publication and with varied levels of formality. So, I suspect you're onto something when you mention current usage. Sorry for the novella and rambling nature of my post.
KGIII 9y ago
Latin and French were the languages of science for quite a while. Arabic before that and Greek before that. This is ignoring Eastern science intentionally. They searched for 'peer review.' I don't see any indication that they searched in other languages, what those phrases might be, and how they accounted for that. Well, that and it looks like they are conflating two ideas. They appear to be speaking about more modern journals and ignoring that philosophers shared and published their work, sought students, and held their findings up for scrutiny. So, not just the phrase part that you mention, but also the language used may impact this. I have no idea how to say peer review in either French or Latin and I am a scientist.
- kobeya 9y ago
  Also German, for a short but meaningful period of time at least. Most of modern physics was originally published in German, for example.