The point is that many human emotions, including nepotism, professional jealousies, methodological disagreements, and ideological biases go into the peer review process. It would be refreshing if we interpreted the “peer-reviewed” sign of approval as the flawed signal that it is, particularly in areas where there seems to be a larger narrative that must be served. The peer-review process may well be the worst way of advancing scientific knowledge-except for all the others.
Peer review primarily exists to maintain the status quo. It’s a fallacy to assume it exists to further scientific inquiry or to advance the body of human knowledge. Most of the major advancements in science and human knowledge were made before peer review was entrenched in the business of academia.
No kidding! The system is far from neutral, objective, and impartial.
There are all sorts of ways in which a publication or proposal can be rejected. For example, something as trivial as which institution one is affiliated with can be enough. I’ve read articles about studies which showed that a manuscript by someone from from a big-name university (of which there are many) is more likely to be accepted than one by an author at Hayseed Academy.
Who one’s associated with also matters. Lone researchers have a difficult time in getting funding. The preference is for those people to be affiliated with an educational institution or corporation, but that could also affect how the work will be done.
One’s reputation alone can sometimes guarantee acceptance, which is one reason why many research publications are poorly written.
Then there’s the aspect of the field one is working in. Some areas of research are so obscure and the number of investigators so small that everyone knows everyone else. That can often have bad consequences, particularly when funding is scarce.
The image that the general public has about researchers being cordial and respectful to one another is just that–an image, one created and maintained by fiction writers and Hollywood. The truth is far different. There’s a reason why it’s called the academic sandbox.
“…many human emotions, including nepotism, professional jealousies, methodological disagreements, and ideological biases….”
Come again? Of those four things only jealousy is an emotion. Economists!
Peer Review.
Peering at what?
The stunning ignorance to so-called scientists and intellectuals..”Peer review is the gold standard of quality science”.
Umm No.
Peer review is a tool of the publisher..Who hoped to make money publishing speculation of which they understand almost nothing.
To avoid looking even more foolish and causing future (free or even paying) contributors to avoid their trap,they found gullible researcher to do a once over reading,preprint, to sort out the worst rants.
Peer review has nothing to do with science,the scientific method or research.
Just a trap set for those who depend on recognition(Published paper) for their government paycheck.
Belief in the utility of this Pal review is damaging both science and “scientific” journalism
But hell, group think is a mighty comfortable thing to poorly educated minds.
Surprise? Not at all. Fifty years of driving out contrary opinions and facts has lead to academia in-breeding. Why would anyone expect anything else but these behaviors? How do we know this is true? The money quote:
“As is much too common these days, when important people do something wrong, heads no longer roll. Would anyone be surprised if any day now the people involved issue a generic non-apology apology telling everyone that it’s time to move on? As someone else famously said: What difference, at this point, does it make?”
This is how you you know in-breeding has occurred. Shocked others wonder what they were thinking and how could they have not known better and, and yadda, yadda, yadda; and everything goes back to the usual with no change. Thank God for death, eventually even the people who think they have all the power learn otherwise.
In-breeding is a good way to describe the situation.
Opinions and results which are different from those which are accepted by the majority are discouraged. Researchers often find themselves marginalized and pushed aside. Their results are published less frequently, if at all, and, worse, they may find themselves without funding.
Forget the idea of pursuing the truth to wherever it leads. Positive results, those supporting the underlying hypothesis, are the only ones that are published. For example, how often does one read a paper about a clinical trial that failed or a long-accepted theory that was disproved?
One thing I found out while working on my Ph. D. is that originality is seldom allowed. It disrupts the comfort that comes with consensus.
In my experience, researchers, particularly those in academe, are like crabs in a bucket. Each one wants to escape and be independent, but when one of them is close to freedom, the rest grab it and pull it back in.
The problems with peer review seem to be well known : pal review, ideological conformity, anonymity, lack of rigour in spotting common issues (p-hacking, small or non-representative sample size) confirmation bias, motivated reasoning, cherry picking data, outright fraud etc. I think from the publics point of view there’s other problems : ideological conformity (again), political bias, ass-kissing, playing ball to get government grants, being bought and paid for by other special interests, peer pressure.
I wonder if professionalizing the review process would help. We’ve all known and worked with people who love being contrarians, skeptics, combative. There’s also people who love researching things to the smallest detail. Finally, there’s people who cannot be bought, they cherish their integrity and independence. Ditch anonymity and have well paid permanent review panels comprised of ideologically diverse non conformists, detail oriented, honest reviewers. Given the homogeneity of many academic departments and their bigotry towards non-conformists, they will have to go outside of the ivory tower to find diversity.
Well I actually do peer review, usually at the rate of four or five submissions a year.
Peer review mostly means having an experienced set of eyes that can improve worthwhile submissions and screen out the poor ones. If peer reviewers didn’t do this, the editors would have to. We shouldn’t think of it as more than that. It’s certainly not a guarantee of infallibility.
But neither should we demean it. Peer review is almost always a valuable step and the scientific literature would be far worse without it. If sometimes papers are fraudulent, it is not likely the peer reviewers’ fault, for they have little choice but to assume that the authors are behaving in good faith. Peer reviewers certainly do not have the resources to repeat the experiments from scratch.
“There are some ideas so absurd that only an intellectual could believe them.”
— George Orwell
A worker at a federal laboratory in Colorado intentionally manipulated test results for years, possibly tainting research on toxic metals in the Everglades, uranium near the Grand Canyon and coal in Afghanistan, investigators say.
The falsified data from a U.S. Geological Survey lab may have affected 24 coal, water and environmental research projects costing a total of $108 million, according to a report released recently by the Interior Department’s inspector general.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/investigators-us-lab-worker-colorado-faked-test-results-063259435.html?nhp=1
“Peer review mostly means having an experienced set of eyes that can improve worthwhile submissions and screen out the poor ones.”
That, in a nutshell, is what ClimateGate in 2009 was all about.
Screening out the contrarian Skeptic papers that proved that Global Warming was bunk was the core of the entire scandal.
It’s like journalism in general. It isn’t the B.S. propaganda or fake news stories that are published that destroy trust in the news.
It’s about the important news that needs to be published that is SCREENED OUT.
Somebody has to make the decision as to whether a paper is fit to be published in a journal. Who would you have making those decisions?