I never learned peer review as anything more than others in the field reviewing the paper and confirming it meets standards. Its like logic vs truth. Peer review is like proofreading. Is the structure of the experiment proper. Is there controls. Is the statistical analysis proper. so on and so forth. Honestly though science is dependent on replication which used to be a sort of competition so it worked. Oh you think this is this and this is how you proved it. Well I will see for myself and I will lambast you if it does not work. It was kinda personal with the field before modern times. Competition was very direct. Now no lab wants to do anything but something they can say is new and a discovery. I feel at least 50% of public science funding should be for experiment replication
It’s a numbers game.
- X submits paper to Journal 1, and peers A,B,C reject it.
- X submits paper with minor changes to Journal 2, and only peers D and E reject it.
- X submits paper with minor changes to Journal 3, and only peer G rejects it
- X submits paper with minor changes to Journal 4, and no one rejects it.
Journal 4 increments prestige, Scientist X increments prestige, but nothing true or good is actually gained.
Science.
Did peer F get murdered for indicating they were going to reject the paper? 🔍🧐
I believe in the scientific method. I believe in peer review.
I just don’t like that scientific journals have become so commodified that a lesser journal would accept volumes of bad science and bad review in order to boost its rankings whilst boosting the prestige of the scientist who is measured on the quantity of their work and not the quality.
Entire paper mills exist purely for this reason, and it’s a scourge on the scientific community.
there are a couple journals where peer review means the former. one that i can think of is Organic Sytheses orgsyn.org
Thank the greed. Even bad results should be kept. It’s still knowledge. To get closer to a goal, many mistakes are made and we have to learn from them. Using the scientific method to find out that something does not work is still valuable.
This is a lesson I try to teach my kids every day. When they get upset they can’t do something, I ask, “well whatd you learn?” And sometimes it’s as simple as “that didn’t work.” Other times they think for a second they try something new.
Failure is a learning opportunity. Take advantage if it.
The ones that fail peer review go from “unexpected result” to “the fuck were you actually doing?!?”
