Peer Review

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Peer review is a relatively new form of gatekeeping used by the DISC to suppress ideas. It functions to keep out bad ideas and amplify good ideas. Like any human process, it fails in its function at times. It sometimes amplifies bad ideas such as those exposed by the Grievance Studies Hoax. It sometimes suppresses important ideas such as those discussed in The Portal Episode 19.

Criticisms of the peer-review crisis include the ad hominem nature of the review, the appeal to authority, the selection bias, the confirmation bias and the replication crisis.

Relevant Essays and Papers

• Is Peer Review a Good Idea? by Remco Heesen, Liam Kofi Bright

Quotes

"The pressure for conformity is enormous. I have experienced it in editors’ rejection of submitted papers, based on venomous criticism of anonymous referees. The replacement of impartial reviewing by censorship will be the death of science." — Julian Schwinger

"Also, funding by peer review results in group-think and whole scientific fields floating off in a self-perpetuating irreality bubble for decades. Randomness will fund mavericks, mostly crackpots, but some may blow up established dysfunctional disciplines." — David Chapman

"A technical argument by a trusted author, which is hard to check and looks similar to arguments known to be correct, is hardly ever checked in detail." — Vladimir Voevodsky

"Research by salaried laborers is becoming a rent-seeking citation ring consisting of large scale imitative rituals, with a decreasing number of results, an increasing cluelessness of participants, and a multiplication of useless rules." — Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Resources & References

• Relevant tweet by Eric that exemplifies how peer review fails.