4 ms·

> since that's what matters I think the societal consequences are "what matters" The technical details _literally_ don't matter without societal consequences

• dekhn 8y ago
  No, scientific articles job is to disseminate knowledge in an impartial way. Peer review exists to verify the technical details are not obviously in error. Since we can't predict the consequences of our actions (few scientists, if polled, would accurately predict the consequences of their papers), it would be entirely speculative. Imagine a paper that showed an amazing improvement in machine learning- we could suddenly predict diseases just by looking at pictures of people's retinas, or predict any number of other fairly private things. Shoudl a technical reviewer say "I think this could and will be used to discriminate against people, so it should not be published"? I'd far rather the reviewer just say whether there was an error, have the paper be published, and let the faculty of 1000 or the larger community debate the legality of whether the technology could be restricted. Note that editors, not peer reviewers, have far more latitude to reject papers due to (their perceived, speculative) societal consequences.