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My comment was satire, which is all the topic deserves because it's ludicrous. The 'suspicion' you speak of has nothing to do with assessing scientific claims.
by aussiesnack 4y ago
My comment was satire, which is all the topic deserves because it's ludicrous. The 'suspicion' you speak of has nothing to do with assessing scientific claims. They stand alone on the evidence presented, and as later tested against competing claims. Later, if the claims don't stand up, someone may well when writing fiction/biography/history/journalism choose to use the writers' background as part of their plot. But it's all irrelevant to science qua science.
The assessing motivations game has no role to play here, and no destination for that matter. You could spend the next millennium trying to determine whether this particular piece of research was published in an Australian journal for nationalistic reasons (and whose reasons?) vs whether it just so happened that a piece of Australian research got published in Australian journals (gosh!) vs whether the putative 'research must be reviewed by peers from outside the region' rule (created in an HN thread) was equally applied to default US and EU based researchers. None of it would illuminate the truth or otherwise of the proposed idea.
- zamadatix 4y agoNo need to spend a millennium on the problem, it'll be substantially peer reviewed the world over many times with additional discoveries supporting or not supporting it well before 1/100th that time. Minding motivations until that point not only plays a role but is a core component, doesn't take long for major discoveries as interesting as this, and does help illuminate the truth as time marches on. Acting like biases aren't relevant doesn't help any of that. Science isn't some absolute truth waiting to be mined it IS that process of discovery, insight, doubt, and review repeated forever. To skip part of it only makes it worse not better.
- aussiesnack 4y agoPeer review doesn't include tests of nationalism, nor biographical investigations. Bias is neither ignored by following the evidence (which is precisely what can indicate it!), nor exposed by wild claims about the nationalism of non-default US/Euro scientists.
- zamadatix 4y agoExtensive peer review tests the evidence which in turn removes biases like the ones you listed. To not do it leaves room for those biases to remain which is what triggers reason to keep suspicion at first.