4 ms·

"everyone I know in academia feels the current publish-or-perish peer-reviewed system is BROKEN: It incentivizes everyone to pursue low-risk, incremental, mostl

"everyone I know in academia feels the current publish-or-perish peer-reviewed system is BROKEN: It incentivizes everyone to pursue low-risk, incremental, mostly inconsequential, easy-to-explain research with high certainty of short-term success, instead of high-risk, exploratory, consequential, hard-to-explain research with high uncertainty of long-term payoff." That is what I keep hearing from my academic acquaintances as well - When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure. And this is what happened with publish or perish. Let's not forget that Katalin Karikó, a giant in the mRNA field, was demoted by UPenn in 1997 because they considered her work unproductive. But mRNA was precisely the topic that required a multi-decade commitment. Fortunately she was stubborn like hell. God know how many other people give up after being degraded like that.

watwut 4y ago
That is complain against the grant system and the way funds are distributed. It is not complain abour peer review itself.
- djha-skin 4y ago
  The article makes it clear that peer review and funding are intricately linked and that one would not exist without the other, at least in the beginning.
  - watwut 4y ago
    It does not make clear that at all. It does not claim peer review can not exist without things those scientista complain about (publish or perish etc).
xipho 4y ago
> But mRNA was precisely the topic that required a multi-decade commitment. It all comes down to this ^ for me. Advances take decades from start to finish. Institutions/organziations (including funders) need to start not just funding innovation (1-5 year cycles), but investing, really committing, to 20-100 year plans, at minimum. My biggest fear is that hands are thrown up in the air, and science turns into yet another "content" producer (there are signs, to me, that this is exactly where we are headed). Can't produce science^D content fast enough? Skip peer-review. Community of experts getting in your way? Ignore them. We need to get science into tik-tok, because think of the reach for STEM! Really, do we need science to equate to 15-second dopamine hits? None of this to say that there aren't problems with peer review, but, at least in the field I'm in, peer review is critical, useful, and an important aspect of becoming a scientist. If anything, learning to peer-review teaches one how to critically evaluate others work. Are there people who aren't taught how to Peer review? Sure. Does this mean that we should stop peer-review? The logic doesn't follow.
lazyjeff 4y ago
I've had my ups and downs with peer review. I'm trying to collect stories of papers from ideation to publication, while also describing the struggle for my own papers. I've written the backstories for 30 of my papers here: https://jeffhuang.com/struggle_for_each_paper/ https://jeffhuang.com/struggle_for_each_paper/ Looking at my past experiences for all my papers, I can only conclude that the process is more nuanced than can be described in a tagline like "peer review is broken" or "publishing is random", so I'm interested in hearing everyone else's experiences too.

watwut 4y ago

That is complain against the grant system and the way funds are distributed. It is not complain abour peer review itself.

djha-skin 4y ago
The article makes it clear that peer review and funding are intricately linked and that one would not exist without the other, at least in the beginning.
- watwut 4y ago
  It does not make clear that at all. It does not claim peer review can not exist without things those scientista complain about (publish or perish etc).

xipho 4y ago

> But mRNA was precisely the topic that required a multi-decade commitment. It all comes down to this ^ for me. Advances take decades from start to finish. Institutions/organziations (including funders) need to start not just funding innovation (1-5 year cycles), but investing, really committing, to 20-100 year plans, at minimum. My biggest fear is that hands are thrown up in the air, and science turns into yet another "content" producer (there are signs, to me, that this is exactly where we are headed). Can't produce science^D content fast enough? Skip peer-review. Community of experts getting in your way? Ignore them. We need to get science into tik-tok, because think of the reach for STEM! Really, do we need science to equate to 15-second dopamine hits? None of this to say that there aren't problems with peer review, but, at least in the field I'm in, peer review is critical, useful, and an important aspect of becoming a scientist. If anything, learning to peer-review teaches one how to critically evaluate others work. Are there people who aren't taught how to Peer review? Sure. Does this mean that we should stop peer-review? The logic doesn't follow.

lazyjeff 4y ago

I've had my ups and downs with peer review. I'm trying to collect stories of papers from ideation to publication, while also describing the struggle for my own papers. I've written the backstories for 30 of my papers here: https://jeffhuang.com/struggle_for_each_paper/ https://jeffhuang.com/struggle_for_each_paper/ Looking at my past experiences for all my papers, I can only conclude that the process is more nuanced than can be described in a tagline like "peer review is broken" or "publishing is random", so I'm interested in hearing everyone else's experiences too.