Peer Review

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.

Quotes

I call up MIT, and I call up David Kaiser. And I say, look, here's the history that I know. You know, we're not talking to people. I deal with colleagues who believe that peer review is is an intrinsic part of science, which is clearly not true. The brainwashing of our scientific institutions, that the fact that we don't know the history of the Golden Age of general relativity that we don't understand the way in which anti gravity intersected the way that we don't understand that we distributed programs in the interstitial regions between nonprofits like universities, government, agencies, like units of the military and private corporations, like our aerospace corporations. We used to know how things got done. And then we passed the Mansfield amendment in the late 1960s, early 1970s, to put the kibosh on military funding of civilian research. And we went completely insane. I mean, I understand their motivation for not wanting the military to be directing civilian research during the Vietnam War. But when you knock out a load bearing wall, you are responsible for putting some support in its place before the destruction is complete.

— Eric Weinstein, June 16, 2021, on Eric Weinstein & Michael Shermer: An honest dialogue about UFOs

For those who still believe in peer review and scientific consensus, ask yourself why someone like the great particle theorist Steven Weinberg (1933-2021) understood Corona Virus GoF risk enough to issue such a strong statement in support of @EcoHealthNYC: 77 Nobel Laureates Express “Grave Concern” Over NIH Grant Cancellation

— Eric Weinstein, March 6, 2023, on X

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

Relevant Essays and Papers

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

See Also

• Knarc
• Peer Injunction
• Thug-Review