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> There's a popular argument about freedom of speech that comes down to "the solution to bad speech is more good speech, not limiting bad speech," but that only
by huijzer 3y ago
> There's a popular argument about freedom of speech that comes down to "the solution to bad speech is more good speech, not limiting bad speech," but that only works (assuming it's true at all) when there's some way for a listener to discern truth with some research or effort.
Yes exactly. If it is too hard for a group of scientists to figure out a flaw, then it is also too hard for two peer reviewers to figure out a flaw. Only time can detect all errors in science, assuming that nonconformist papers are allowed into the conversation.
> Good papers are good when they collected data correctly and then presented the results fairly.
This is only true for empirical papers. Good data is a part of a good argument in the case of empirical papers.
- notahacker 3y ago> If it is too hard for a group of scientists to figure out a flaw, then it is also too hard for two peer reviewers to figure out a flaw. The issue isn't that flawed papers are necessarily hard to spot, the issue is that indiscriminate publishing means that anyone studying a topic has to wade through a lot of flawed ones before they find anything halfway useful. Time and attention are finite. Peer review and journals caring about reputation, in theory, caps the number of readers of rubbish papers at 2 (and disincentivises writing unpublishable crap to submit in the first place... although this is now eroded since generating rubbish papers is now effort-free)