81–90 of 154 posts
See also from the same author:
* https://www.experimental-history.com/p/the-rise-and-fall-of-...
* https://www.experimental-history.com/p/the-dance-of-the-nake...
* https://www.experimental-history.com/p/lets-build-a-fleet-an...
i am very glad to see others (presumably non-scientists) in this thread dunking on the false paradigm that "peer review = true". anyone who peddles this notion is naive or a moron. while the author is correct that the for-profit publishing is definitely a negative externality, i can't help but feel they are missing the forest for the trees when it comes to all the other worse issues in academia. a full explanation of…
Though at least in my field part of that is budgets are so tight it seems like most of the effort is needed to just keep the lights on. I don't see anyone who has bandwidth to help burn things down or rebuild in my department as much of the staff are already working unpaid overtime (and good luck getting funding for hiring many more).
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The naive public does not believe anything in particular about peer review. They think new scientific results are significant when they read about them in the popular media, that’s it. People who do need to work professionally with peer review, do understand what it actually does and its limitations. You seem stuck somewhere in the middle, caring deeply about a system you don’t seem to fully understand.
> The naive public does not believe anything in particular about peer review You'd need to provide evidence or an argument for this. The media reports on things in part based on journal prestige, and likely when questioned, people will say they can trust such things because good scientists have looked at the work and say it is good. This would be an implicit belief that peer review is generally working well, even if…
You've provided evidence that peer-reviewed science often turns out to be incomplete, inaccurate, wrong, fraudulent etc. All true. But it is not the job of peer reviewers to assure completeness, accuracy, or freedom from fraud.
A peer reviewer reads a paper and make comments on it. That's it! They don't check primary data, they don't investigate methods, they don't interrogate scientists, they don't re-run experiments just to double check. They assist a journal's editors in editing--that's it.
The check on published scientific results is the scientific process itself, not the publishing process. Prominent results attract further investigation, which confirms or disproves the reality of the underlying phenomena. Again: that's not the job of peer review.
Do some people ascribe too much authority to peer review? Yes, for sure. IMO your comments in this thread are exacerbating that problem, not addressing it.
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>It was already a grueling 60-80 hour grind every week with frequent all nighters, high-pressure deadlines, absolute minimal pay, thankless duties, and plenty of politics. You know what else works really hard? A washing machine. Hard work alone doesnt create value. I could give you a spoon and tell you to dig a hole, or I can teach you how to use a Digger.
Some things are hard because you overcomplicate them. Some things are hard by their very nature. Unless you are a Claude Shannon type, adding fundamental new knowledge to humanity's corpus is generally actually hard - at least in science & engineering. If you feel differently, I look forward to reading your groundbreaking papers!
Academia will refer to my stuff. Various levels of the US government use my data.
To be honest, I think I got lucky + I was a (hardcore) Stoic for a decade + my hobby was scientific.
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>It was already a grueling 60-80 hour grind every week with frequent all nighters, high-pressure deadlines, absolute minimal pay, thankless duties, and plenty of politics. You know what else works really hard? A washing machine. Hard work alone doesnt create value. I could give you a spoon and tell you to dig a hole, or I can teach you how to use a Digger.
> You know what else works really hard? A washing machine. Hard work alone doesnt create value. My washing machine creates a lot of value for me. The time it saves me is incredibly valuable. Most machines that work really hard are valuable because they free up time. This wasn’t the clever burn you thought it was.
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>The first thing an academic does is check where a paper is published, before even reading it. It's a crutch. This is actually what ruined my respect for Academia. My Science PhD buddy looked at the journal title and the claim, then said: "Its true!" I look at him with horror. Who cares about the journal, I want to know data and methodology. I've basically never forgiven Academia since this. I see even Ivys put out b…
> This is actually what ruined my respect for Academia. Spoken like someone who never went through grad school at a competitive R1 program It was already a grueling 60-80 hour grind every week with frequent all nighters, high-pressure deadlines, absolute minimal pay, thankless duties, and plenty of politics. It's about the same for professors too. We already paid our dues by helping peer review (for free) a half doze…
And chances are: Those overbearing advisors are very invested in the current system.
1) pay reviewers. 2) you can't publish unless a reviewer replicates your work.
yes. It can be done.
Like some other posters here I think that a paid service is probably a necessary evil for long term quality regulation (although currently it skews too much into evil)
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>The first thing an academic does is check where a paper is published, before even reading it. It's a crutch. This is actually what ruined my respect for Academia. My Science PhD buddy looked at the journal title and the claim, then said: "Its true!" I look at him with horror. Who cares about the journal, I want to know data and methodology. I've basically never forgiven Academia since this. I see even Ivys put out b…
> This is actually what ruined my respect for Academia. Spoken like someone who never went through grad school at a competitive R1 program It was already a grueling 60-80 hour grind every week with frequent all nighters, high-pressure deadlines, absolute minimal pay, thankless duties, and plenty of politics. It's about the same for professors too. We already paid our dues by helping peer review (for free) a half doze…
You don’t need a degree to understand how much utter junk science is being published by those who think they are superior to you. Just read a few actual papers end to end and look at the data vs conclusions and it becomes totally obvious very rapidly that you cannot “trust the science” since it’s rarely actual science being done any longer.
The academic community has utterly failed at understanding they needed to cull this behavior early and mercilessly. They did not, and it will be generations at best to rebuild the trust they once had. If they ever figure out they need to.
Things are going to get much worse before they get better. You can’t take any published paper at face value any longer without going direct to primary sources and bouncing it off an expert in the space you still trust to give you the actual truth.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
>The first thing an academic does is check where a paper is published, before even reading it. It's a crutch. This is actually what ruined my respect for Academia. My Science PhD buddy looked at the journal title and the claim, then said: "Its true!" I look at him with horror. Who cares about the journal, I want to know data and methodology. I've basically never forgiven Academia since this. I see even Ivys put out b…
> This is actually what ruined my respect for Academia. Spoken like someone who never went through grad school at a competitive R1 program It was already a grueling 60-80 hour grind every week with frequent all nighters, high-pressure deadlines, absolute minimal pay, thankless duties, and plenty of politics. It's about the same for professors too. We already paid our dues by helping peer review (for free) a half doze…