torsdag 27 november 2014

"Peer review"- a dictatorship without dictator

Believers in "peer review" claim that it stops nonsense from being published, but the truth is that it simply stops whatever one or more of the reviewers disagree with from being published, and that varies depending on what people happens to be the reviewers. If a theory is never published in any "peer review" journal, that does not mean that it is nonsense, it just means that opinions that disagree with that theory are very widespread in the institutions from which the reviewers are picked. The claim that "peer review" is "immune to corruption" because multiple reviewers must approve an article for it to be published ignores negative corruption. Preventing a correct theory from being published is not any better for science than publishing a false one. "Peer review" makes it easy for anyone to dishonestly stop publication of theories, preserving old incorrect ones. "Peer review" is thus just a dictatorship without dictator, in which the dictator was removed in such a way the lack of dictator did not reduce oppression. No wonder the generation of new useful theories have stagnated!

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