It is a serious human weakness. Closed minds rarely arrive at the best conclusions. If I go back to the dome uplift, there is some common sense to it. We know that, prior to the formation of the Rocky Mountains, there was an inland sea in places like Colorado. They dig up marine fossils from the rocks all the time. I dug up a few myself. So the idea was sensible and believable. It became a strong scientific theory. It was appropriate to have published the idea since it made sense even though it was wrong. Science, like everything else in our society, suffers from politics and human emotions. The peer review process is an effective way to keep it focused on the science. We just need to keep the review process out of the business of censoring papers and let it work to prove or disprove a paper. You need to let the scientific community have a chance to read the paper and react to it. We Americans love the concept of free speech. It should apply to scientific communication as well.
Word is getting out. WUWT will bring this essay to a larger audience. The Rise and Fall of Peer Review Charles Rotter For the last 60 years or so, science has been running an experiment on itself. . . .
A scientific journal has an interest in ensuring that the papers it publishes are quality papers - that the work was carried out properly, that it supports conclusions, etc. That's their reason for existing as a business. They can't afford to publish papers that include flawed methodology. Journals have their own policies on how they carry out peer review. The author may be able to resolve the issues found in peer review, which might cause the paper to be published in that journal. If you want to print stuff that doesn't meet the requirements of some journal, you can. There is nothing stopping you from printing whatever you want to print. You could start your own journal, for example. I'd also point out that journals don't print every paper that meets peer review. They can't, simply because there is an overwhelming number of papers. So, papers can be rejected simply because there are many papers on a specific topic. Also, a paper may not show enough scientific progress to warrant publication. Papers not yet published usually get added to one of the major archives made for the topic. For instance, if you are interested in physics, you can search arxiv.com. Phds and phd candidates search these archives to ensure they know about work being done by others, while aware that the papers may or may not have been reviewed by a journal. Your last paragraph is something VERY different. All sciences are constantly moving forward.
One assumes they have at least one scientist on staff that can ID a faulty submission. Your argument fails because the closed censorship involved doesn't prevent faulty submissions. It may reduce them but it may also reject a diamond in the rough. I think it is better to publish it if it makes sense and let the scientific community as a whole work with it. The scientific community will do that anyway but only if they are exposed to it. Yes you can simply post it or a link to it in social media. The purpose of the publication in a journal is to increase readership among the scientists involved in the same or similar discipline. This is true of virtually every kind of publication. They should publish what they view as most valuable to the readers without outside censorship. Nobody suggests that the publication should abandon standards. I would just prefer to have the peer review done after publication by the entire scientific community. That is a plus to be sure. I wonder how much exposure that really provides. Perhaps it is enough. Different from what? I agree that the sciences evolve and improve over time. I hope you understand that I think peer review is a necessary part of the scientific method. I just prefer that it be done with as little censorship as possible.
Biologist Jim Woodgett, writing in Nature: The scientific community must be diligent in highlighting abuses, develop greater transparency and accessibility for its work, police research more effectively and exemplify laudable behaviour. This includes encouraging more open debate about misconduct and malpractice, exposing our dirty laundry and welcoming external examination. A good example of this, the website Retraction Watch (www.retractionwatch.com), shines light on problems with papers and, by doing so, educates and celebrates research ethics and good practice. Peer pressure is a powerful tool — but only if peers are aware of infractions and bad practice.
Thanks for bringing up this topic. I think that with some topics, Peer Review is simply an echo chamber. Thanks,
Peer review isn't done by staff. The review has to do with methodology. As I pointed out, authors put their papers on archive sites. Take a look at arxiv.com. Phds would rarely if ever put papers on social media. Science reporters and others can find papers on the archive sites. You keep talking about "censorship". I see zero censorship. Journals are NOT going to publish papers without the paper having been reviewed. Think about it. That would mean that the journal would be more vulnerable to publishing nonsense. Plus, where would YOU go to see the peer review content in your system. Once more, you talk about "censorship". I see no censorship.
This topic can't be considered to have been addressed by a paragraph. For example, one of the problems is that peer review is thankless overhead in the lives of experts in the field who have their own research which is usually limited in time and expense by their source of funding. So, finding qualified reviewers for all the papers that could be published is a daunting task for the various journals that are interested enough in quality that they require review. Also, peer review is not perfect and it is limited by purpose. For example, papers that end up being retracted are not necessarily retracted for issue that should have been found by peer review. The original work may have followed proper methodology and even be corroborated by other papers, yet still found to be wrong enough to require retraction.
The reason I disagree is that the reviewer is tasked with finding whether proper methodology was used and whether any stated results follow from the work that was done. For serious journals, the authors are involved in this process.
The Center For Scientific Integrity The Center For Scientific Integrity The mission of the Center for Scientific Integrity, the parent organization of Retraction Watch, is to promote transparency and integrity in science and scientific publishing, and to disseminate best practices and increase efficiency in science. The goals of the Center fall under four broad areas: A database of retractions, expressions of concern and related publishing events, generated by the work of Retraction Watch. The database will be freely available to scientists, scholars and anyone else interested in analyzing the information. Long-form, larger-impact writing, including magazine-length articles, reports and books. Scholarship on scientific integrity and incentives in science. Aid and assistance to groups and individuals whose interests in transparency and accountability intersect with ours, and who could benefit from shared expertise and resources. The Center is a 501(c)3 non-profit. Its work has been funded by generous grants from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the Laura and John Arnold Foundation, and the Leona M. and Harry B. Helmsley Trust. Learn more about our Board of Directors here. And read our 2021 tax return here, our 2020 tax return here, our 2019 tax return here, our 2018 tax return here, our 2017 tax return here, our 2016 tax return here, our 2015 tax return here, and our 2014 tax return here.
From the OP link: ". . . Here’s a simple question: does peer review actually do the thing it’s supposed to do? Does it catch bad research and prevent it from being published? It doesn’t. Scientists have run studies where they deliberately add errors to papers, send them out to reviewers, and simply count how many errors the reviewers catch. Reviewers are pretty awful at this. In this study reviewers caught 30% of the major flaws, in this study they caught 25%, and in this study they caught 29%. These were critical issues, like “the paper claims to be a randomized controlled trial but it isn’t” and “when you look at the graphs, it’s pretty clear there’s no effect” and “the authors draw conclusions that are totally unsupported by the data.” Reviewers mostly didn’t notice. In fact, we’ve got knock-down, real-world data that peer review doesn’t work: fraudulent papers get published all the time. If reviewers were doing their job, we’d hear lots of stories like “Professor Cornelius von Fraud was fired today after trying to submit a fake paper to a scientific journal.” But we never hear stories like that. Instead, pretty much every story about fraud begins with the paper passing review and being published. Only later does some good Samaritan—often someone in the author’s own lab!—notice something weird and decide to investigate. . . . "
Yes, there is plenty to whine about - and thank GOD you're here to help with that service! As for those citing on this board, it would be great if people ONLY cited papers that WERE reviewed, as that is pretty much the gate keeping that we have. I'm fully in favor of improvements to the review process. So are the quality journals, by the way. My guess is that once someone has the qualifications to review papers in a particular domain, the very LAST thing they want to do is review someone else's papers. After all, they got their phd in order to do science - NOT to do review.
Peer review is a joke on "us". At our expense too! Science Conferences creating realms of back slapping, socially lubricant scientists behaving as politicians. Working their way up some University ladder while hardly contributing to the general welfare. Notice, no scientist without University affiliation remains recognized regardless of publications and original science. Moi
It is puzzling when several organizations trying to help science research be honest and valid get attacked for it. Retraction Watch does a good service because it sheds a spotlight on what is being retracted/rejected and expose fraudulent papers by exposing it to a wider readership. I think some here like PAL review too much.
And what I find so fascinating about plate tectonics is that it explains a hell of a lot that had been discovered geologically, and finally brings them all together in a way that makes sense. And much more than just the Rocky Mountains. It also explains the Appalachian mountains, which they knew already were formed around 500 mya. But geology of the time with a "static earth" could not explain their formation. Until it was realized by rolling back the plate movement that during "Pangea Proxima", the east coast of North America was pushed against the west coast of Africa. And that collision is what formed the mountains. Once the highest range in the world, but through half a billion years of erosion a shadow of itself. Or that even earlier, Australia had been attached to the West Coast of North America, which explains how Australian zircons were deposited on NA. Or the deep sea sedimentary rocks combined with pillow basalt in NE Washington, along with the Olympic Mountains and Mt. Olympus. Mostly uplifted limestone and fossilized mud, caused by the Juan de Fuca plate being "scraped clean" as it dove below the North American Plate. Or why parts of Oregon and Washington appeared through magnetic minerals to have been formed around the equator. And there are still many things that even today geologists can not really answer. One I have even asked several, and none have an explanation for according to anything known through geology. Which I already mentioned, the strange change of direction of the Snake River Plain. In this one can easily see the path of the Yellowstone hotspot for over 16 million years. That is what cut the Snake River Plain, each caldera fits cleanly inside of it. And it literally cuts through between the Sawtooth and Owyhee Mountains, which were once a single range. And the calderas are clearly inside the Plain, until Bruneau-Jarbridge, from 12-10 mya. The calderas then continue in a line SW, into the Owyhee mountains. However, at that same point the Snake River Plain turns NW, continuing to cut a path into Oregon. With no apparent calderas located under it. But more recently, they have been finding older calderas in Oregon and Washington. Which has led to an even more recent understanding that not only is NA moving south and west, at least the area around Washington and Oregon is rotating. And the hotspot does not move through California where it has been erased by mountain uplift, it takes a sharp turn north. Most of this is still being debated in the geological community, as it is still only about 10 years since this was understood by some geologists. And a great many still do not accept it, insisting that the calderas are not related to Yellowstone at all. And it will likely be decades more until geologists finally come to a consensus about the strange geology of the Pacific Northwest.
Because in reality, it is more religion than science for them. Anything that calls into question their beliefs must be attacked, outcast, and shunned. Only the Orthodoxly views are allowed to be given consideration, nothing else.
Exactly my point. Doing the review prior to publication is my issue. Having the scientists deal with it after publication avoids censorship. Some do I suppose and some don't. It sounds like a place where censored content goes to die. A matter of choice. Someone sends a paper to a journal. The journal thinks it deserves to be reviewed. They send it to a third party for that. It is rejected by the third party. Classic censorship. You missed my comment about the peer review methodology possibly missing important science. I imagine that the process uncovers more bad science than it misses good science. But to me missing good science is worse than dealing with bad science. Hypotheses aren't really harmful in my view as long as we understand what they are. You are on a politics web site. Consider how opinions (hypotheses) become truth that create a fight between the two hypotheticals. Science has better data than politics so it should be far less worrisome to deal with scientific hypotheses. Rejecting ideas before they are shared is the classic definition for censorship.
I'm perfectly fine with improving peer review and other efforts to help ensure that legitimate methodology is followed, etc. However, what I see here is not an effort to improve science. It is an effort to undermine the validity of science. Not once do such posts point to methods being used to improve peer review or to new ideas on how review might be improved or even to the difficulties being faced in such efforts. Not once is there comment on the many ways that may be used to avoid falling victim to some paper that was retracted. Also, one never sees how actual professional researchers use archives, including the methods they use in order to ensure their own papers are of the highest standard. Plus, posters above consistently ignore the size of the problem. There is never a comparison between the number of retractions to the total number of papers. I'd also point out that the problem of poor information reaching the public has far far more to do with science reporting, including the economics of attracting readers.
Peer review doesn't cause censorship. Plus, the methodological problems that peer review addresses are ones that readers are not going to catch. Journals print science they are willing to stand behind - not someone's ideas. Remember that the problems mentioned above have to do with papers that were not reviewed thoroughly enough, thus invalid research got published. Science journals are not Twitter, or Facebook. Their business is to publish serious science that has been verified. It is a hit to their business if they have to retract papers. People pay for Nature, etc., because they know they are getting solid research. - NOT someone's ideas.
It is the fact that those that are the most biased, most often completely miss the fact of how biased they are. They justify ignoring anything they do not agree with internally, and see absolutely nothing wrong with quashing things they do not agree with. And you can even see it in other subjects. Bring up internal bias, and a lot of them scream and yell and rant and insist they are not biased.
Early studies on Aspartame found that it causes bladder cancer in mice and therefore it also causes bladder cancer in Humans. However, the researchers in that study fed mice the equivalent amount of Aspartame in 2 1/2 cans of diet soda-which is a lot, considering mice weigh typically 1 pound. Moreover, it was found that mice have completely different bladder physiology than humans (who knew lol) Using mice as proxies for the effects of bladder cancer on humans, is like using dogs as proxies for the effects of chocolate on humans. Chocolate is toxic to dogs not humans.
Google: "replication crisis", it is a serious problem. "Yet another publisher has found itself in the midst of a peer review scandal. Hindawi Publishing Corp., a New York- and Cairo-based group that oversees 437 academic journals, is now reviewing 32 published papers to investigate possible fraud, Retraction Watch reports. "... three Editors who appear to have subverted the peer review process by creating fraudulent reviewer accounts and using these accounts to submit favorable review reports." In other words, they circumvented the process of peer review -- whereby scientific papers are given a thumbs up by scientists unrelated to the work before they're published -- by creating puppet reviewers." THE WASHINGTON POST, Science, ‘Fraudulent’ peer review strikes another academic publisher; 32 articles questioned, By Rachel Feltman, July 8, 2015. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news...er-academic-publisher-32-articles-questioned/
For every 1 person in the Social Sciences who does not identify as a Democrat, 8 others do, and 82% admit they would discriminate against Republicans, such as during peer review. It was found Democrats are much less critical of papers they agree with and much more critical of papers they disagree with.
Actually, it's even worse when you realize what a mouse really weighs. Now I am going to convert to metric here, but 1 pound is .45 kg. And 2.5 cans of soda is roughly 390 grams. But the estimate is very wrong, as a mouse only weighs on average about 1 ounce, or around 30 grams. And the amounts fed to the mice was 15% of those suggested to be fed to a human. It is not rocket science to see that 15% fed to a roughly 160 pound human is an insane amount to be feeding to a 1 ounce rodent. That literally means they were feeding the mice absolutely insane amounts of the stuff. And it is not rocket science that if you feed any animal huge quantities of anything, there will be side effects. And this is not even the first time such has happened. Over 5 decades ago the exact same thing was done with Red Dye 3, where a significant percentage of the diet fed to rats showed thyroid cancers. It is the same kind of scientific nonsense both times. Show me anybody, anywhere that 5-10% of their diet is made up of a specific chemical. Hell, salt is a poison made up of two different poisons. Yet we need it to live.
