8 ms·
peer review is not infallible. Stop worshipping it.
by mjfl 6y ago
peer review is not infallible. Stop worshipping it.
- Rochus 6y agoDo you have a better concept?
- adamnemecek 6y agoThat’s a terrible response.
- jevgeni 6y agoSo “no”.
- Rochus 6y agoWhy?
- adamnemecek 6y agoYou can criticize something without having a replacement.
- Rochus 6y agoAnd how is that supposed to help us in this case? It doesn't have to be a "replacement", but at least some suggestions for improvement; just rejecting without any suggestions is not constructive.
- benibela 6y agoA wiki Then anyone can correct mistakes
- Rochus 6y agoI wouldn't publish the results of my multi year scientific effort on a platform "anyone" could make changes. Reviewer are expected to have a suitable qualification and experience and no bias. The publisher knows the reviewers and can select suitable ones. In a wiki, where anyone can publish or change anything without control, the scientific level - at least in certain areas - will inevitably level down. There is no perfect system, but there are many worse than we already have.
- mjfl 6y ago> no bias. Is that a joke? Have you ever been in academia? Bias is everywhere. Bias towards certain hypotheses, political outlooks, methods, etc. The more senior someone is in a field, the more biased they tend to be! I've seen the founder of a field vote to reject a paper because it was "already known" because he skimmed the paper and misread it. There are entire fields of Alzheimer's research that are suppressed because they don't work with the Field's Favorite Aggregating Protein. I've witnessed people add spin to the conclusion section of a paper so that it looks less politically incorrect, and I've also witnessed that this step is both necessary and effective for getting a "dicey" paper published. Get out of here if you're going to assert that scientists are these objective Vulcan types that are "above the fray". They are some of the most "biased" and opinionated people in existence!!
- Rochus 6y ago> Have you ever been in academia? Yes, did several studies and also a PhD with a Nobel laureat and some publications. I don't claim our present system is perfect; it's far from it; but I don't know a better one; thus my question: Do you have a better concept?
- mjfl 6y agoThere are plenty of other options, the one I'll focus on is already is in widespread use: science seems to progress fine using only preprints. It is the norm in physics and becoming the norm for biology to read the preprint of a paper long before it is published in a journal. Official peer review adds very little value over this system.
- shawnz 6y agoI think their implication is that you'd simply make use of peer review without treating it as infallible.
- Rochus 6y agoTreating something or someone as infallible contradicts the basic principles of science.
- shawnz 6y agoSo then you must agree, "Peer reviewers of Nature did a bad job" is a poor dismissal of their criticisms
- Rochus 6y agoThat was my question; glad you saw it; it's still unanswered; providing testable evidence for a claim is another basic principle of science; if the article or the reviewers are wrong, the top commenter has to give them a chance to recognise that by providing evidence for review.
- shawnz 6y agoI'm not following your point anymore. I wish you would just explain your criticism instead of making these snarky comments.
- Bud 6y agoNobody was "worshipping" it, and nobody has asserted that it's infallible; that being the case, your comment is entirely content-free.