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To: Brumar89 who wrote (69956)	5/11/2016 1:03:29 PM
From: Brumar89	1 Recommendation Recommended By Thomas A Watson Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 86356

Peer Review Veteran: “Peer Review Has Lots Of Problems …Tends To Stifle Non-Dogmatic Thinking” By P Gosselin on 11. May 2016 What follows is a comment by a PhD (wishes to remain anonymous) on the subject of peer-review. I’ve decided to upgrade it to a post (some editing). ============================================ Peer Review Is Not MagicBy The indomitable Snowman PhD I usually don’t comment. But I noticed that NTZ attracted a new troll, who is just taking talking points from the support group sites and regurgitating them. Peer-review often serves to prop up dearly held dogma. I just couldn’t let the so often cited “holy peer review” thing pass because it’s long been a mess. Since with publication on climate science, one is required to support the dogma, or the very least not dare to question it, or risk getting fired or having your funding pulled (same thing). I would say the appropriate term is “FEAR review”. It’s funny to see comments from alarmists and the links to the sites they provide. Those “sites” are very often not information sites, but support groups for zealots who need to believe and to go there to get belief-support and talking points – and who then leave their bubble and mindlessly regurgitate it all later. The “peer review” thing is one of those babbling points. As Ed Begley (in)famously said, “Don’t take it from me folks – take it from people with a ‘Ph.D.’ after their name.” Peer review isn’t magic and has lots of problems, and I say this as someone who has had regular contact with peer review for more than two decades – as an author, reviewer, and editor. Peer review serves only to provide some minimal quality control – screening out things like bad grammar, weak background work on references and prior art, etc. It’s also an iterative process – a paper is reviewed and the reviewers have comments/thoughts for the author(s), and the process iterates – it’s actually very unusual for any paper to be “outrighted” – either accepted as-is or simply rejected outright. It’s funny seeing the inflated claims made (by no-doubt non-participants), since the system was never built to provide the claims of infallibility that the non-participants ascribe to it. Some problems with peer review: It’s time consuming, and everyone is busy. Reviewers are volunteers, and usually they are short on time (like everyone) and a request for a prompt review is one more thing on the pile. (The best place to do peer review is in the passenger compartment of a commercial aircraft.) So peer review tends to be quite cursory, even when intentions are good. Too many academics – and they too often treat manuscripts as being a student’s dissertation and continually demand more analysis and MORE analysis; it’s amazing how much useful material never gets into the journals simply because someone wants more and more and MORE analysis/measurements done to (in the reviewer’s view) nail down every last detail to the n-th degree. The process can be abused with intent – and this is true in ALL fields. Peer review tends to stifle non-dogmatic thinking (and the more academic the field, the more this happens). This doesn’t even have to be malevolent – dogma can become so entrenched that anything that disagrees is instantly branded as incorrect; given the number of dogmatic points in a wide variety of fields that have turned out to be totally wrong, you’d think that there would be interest in reforming the process, but that hasn’t happened yet. And, unfortunately, the process is regularly abused to suppress opposing views – or views/ideas that are merely “competitive” to the reviewer’s views (or “side”). I’ve actually seen numerous instances where the same (as always, anonymous during the review process) reviewers who blocked a paper from being published then state publicly that those opposing ideas are obviously wrong because “they were unable to get through peer review.” This general problem is finally getting some attention – along with other problems with the actual realities of “science.” There’s an excellent-and-timely article that came out this month that’s worth reading in detail, which discusses “peer review” and other issues that are undermining the quality and usefulness of “science.” http://www.firstthings.com/article/2016/05/scientific-regress Take the time to read that whole article; it’s lengthy but worth it. - See more at: http://notrickszone.com/#sthash.Rzf5L9wN.dpuf Harry Dale Huffman 11. May 2016 at 1:39 PM \| Permalink \| Reply Ordinary people need to understand that there are basically two kinds of scientist when it comes to the peer-review process: 1) Principal Investigators, and 2) Everyone else, including a) Research Associates, who are simply employees, without tenure, who can be “terminated”–fired–without cause, and b)”expert” (a meaningless word these days) consultants from other fields or other institutions (also known as “pals”, as in “pal review”, get it?). When the subject of peer review comes up these days, I trot out my 2003 letter on peer review to the OMB, when it requested feedback on peer review (see also all 2003 Public Comments on Peer Review that they received). My bottom line, from experience: “peer review … is a system akin to that of independent feudal lords or warring tribal chiefs”, i.e., those “Principal Investigators” whose main concerns are keeping their research grant money coming in year after year, and being taken as the unquestioned authorities in their fields (which mainly requires they never allow even the possibility they could be wrong about the “settled science”, as the “Emperor” must be peerless, in their own minds). As you can see, the fundamental mindset is that of “survival of the fittest and I must be the fittest”–and (LEARN THIS, people) that mindset (also known as “the struggle for scarce resources”) is NOT the way to the TRUTH in science (despite what you may think you have learned “the hard way” in life). True science–uncovering the truth–is NOT a competition (or a social construct, as in “postnormal science” or even a “consensus”), in any way, shape or form. It is, fundamentally, a single mind, learning something true (cause and effect) about the world–period. [ Science advances in generations. The old have to literally die off for skeptical ideas to be entertained. The dietary advice given decades ago .. now they realize it was wrong headed. Similarly the present generation of climate lysenkoists will have to be buried before skeptical ideas about CAGW take over. But it will happen. ]