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Revision as of 05:32, 28 September 2025

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

@EricRWeinstein

Q: Why do I not back down when experts tell me I'm an idiot?

A: Mobs of credentialed experts are OFTEN just *TOTALLY* wrong in their very area of exerptise. They tend to reinforce each other in their certainties.

In particular, *SCIENTISTS ARE FLAT OUT WRONG* on "Peer Review":

Melinda-Baldwin-Peer-Review-Scholarly-Kitchen-GtB-mQUagAAEpyl.jpg

9:16 PM · Jun 9, 2025

@EricRWeinstein

So, please, lecture me on Peer Review and how it has always been here in science. Just perserverate that same thing over and over and over again. I'm here for you.

When your head is often filled with malware, at least take a moment to figure out how much you want to teach someone else "with receipts" who isn't backing down.

9:25 PM · Jun 9, 2025

@EricRWeinstein

Peer Review is a *RECENT*, unwanted, disastorous, administrative rewriting of research science culture. If you want to know what kills progress, it's this.

Source of image: Interview with Melinda Baldwin at the "Scholarly Kitchen".

https://scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/2018/09/26/the-rise-of-peer-review-melinda-baldwin-on-the-history-of-refereeing-at-scientific-journals-and-funding-bodies/

9:25 PM · Jun 9, 2025

@EricRWeinstein

People who lie about the research of others cannot be referees. Period. And that lying is absolutely everywhere.

This is why we stagnate.

If you put consensus scientists in charge, you always stagnate innovation. The consensus is VERY often wrong.

We had it more right before.

9:32 PM · Jun 9, 2025

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

On Youtube

On X

2009

@EricRWeinstein

CLAIM: It is unethical to offer rent seekers anonymity w/ peer review if they refuse to risk profit 'shorting' what they block.

Nov 15, 2009

@EricRWeinstein

Q:Given that 'peer review' is objectively a major danger to innovators, why make it difficult-to-impossible to arbitrage? Cui bono?

Nov 16, 2009

2011

@EricRWeinstein

The anonymity differential in peer review has been exactly reversed from what makes sense.

Not to mention, obviously so.

8:18 PM · Apr 5, 2011

2013

@EricRWeinstein

"I can’t figure out why my study of the pervasive denial of bias in academic peer review was rejected for publication." #paradoxofacademics

12:21 PM · Aug 3, 2013

2016

@EricRWeinstein

If I wanted to destroy the scientific capability of an enemy nation, I would first get them to adopt accountability, metrics & peer review.

10:23 AM · Aug 22, 2016

@EricRWeinstein

If you think about it, "Peer Review" is what potentially stops peers from reviewing your work. It's really Expert Suppression. Oh, language.

11:06 AM · Nov 21, 2016

2018

@EricRWeinstein

1/ APRIL FOOL'S SCIENCE: A proposal.

Already bored of the coming "April Fools' Day!" pranks? Same here. And it's still March!

Consider how we might re-purpose this resource for science. What if 1 day a year, we explored big ideas that'd normally result in professional shunning?

3:28 PM · Mar 29, 2018

@EricRWeinstein

2/ In years past, you might have seen a post suggesting that stress doesn't cause ulcers. That fear of being labeled a Lamarkian was keeping us from seeing epigenetics properly. That carbs in the food pyramid were wildly off. That laboratory mice were engineered to approve drugs.

3:34 PM · Mar 29, 2018

@EricRWeinstein

3/ My belief is that most great scientific ideas are likely dying w their creators because the cost of destroying the livelihood & reputation of any rival entertaining threatening ideas is so low, while the ability to do so has never been easier since peer review entered science.

3:45 PM · Mar 29, 2018

@EricRWeinstein

4/ In particular, I think our young people need to not have to wait for the retirement of elders to advance new ideas. How many young people in Physics ask "Why is David Gross setting the direction yet again? Should we *try* giving the closing/opening talk to someone under 25?"

3:51 PM · Mar 29, 2018

@EricRWeinstein

5/ What is moving me today, is a letter from Einstein to his friend Habicht in the fall of 1905. In it he opens up about a lack of complete confidence because the good lord may be playing a trick on him. And this during his "Miracle year"! So April 1st is the day to call g-d out.

3:57 PM · Mar 29, 2018

@EricRWeinstein

6/ To put it in Einstein's terms "I cannot tell whether the good lord is playing a trick on me" but he seems to be telling me that perhaps it's really established scientists, science administrators, and research institutions who are holding back colleagues w/ better bolder ideas.

4:20 PM · Mar 29, 2018

@EricRWeinstein

7/ So on April 1, let any junior faculty, adjunct, research assistant, student, outsider, or even Nobel Laureate who is foolhardy enough to come forward with disruptive dangerous unlikely but *competent* partial ideas do so without fear. Then let them develop those ideas for 1Yr.

4:24 PM · Mar 29, 2018

@EricRWeinstein

END/ At the end of a year, let the fools report back. They can choose to abandon the idea without reputational cost, or pursue it letting the skeptics, the hard-asses, and the luminaries engage in their usual dominance displays & policing activities.

Thank you for your time.

4:24 PM · Mar 29, 2018

2020

@EricRWeinstein

I wouldn’t worry. My friends assure me this will all be caught easily in Peer Review before publication.

What stage are these drafts in *before* release?

@MicrobiomDigest

I am ringing the alarm. We have now found >400 papers that all share a very similar title layout, graph layout, and (most importantly) the same Western blot layout. This is a massive #PaperMill of (what we assume) fabricated data.

9:00 AM · Feb 21, 2020

3:14 PM · Feb 21, 2020

@EricRWeinstein

Wait...what? But that’s impossible!

4:16 PM · Feb 21, 2020

@MicrobiomDigest

It is extremely disturbing that most of these 400 papers have passed #PeerReview. The Western blot figures look too regular and have the same background. None of the 800+ peer reviewers or editors asked critical questions about such figures. Don't be that peer reviewer.

9:19 AM · Feb 21, 2020

@EricRWeinstein

So ... Forgive me. Wouldn’t that call Peer Review into question then?

4:17 PM · Feb 21, 2020

@EricRWeinstein

Thanks for this! In essence the article says that Peer Review isn’t even Peer Reviewable because we haven’t been able to get good data. Yet it has 98% support of researchers with nearly zero data and an incorrect first sentence in the premier science journal, Nature. #ResIpsaBaby

3:59 PM · Mar 3, 2020

Peer review under—peer review

Calling @EricRWeinstein @BretWeinstein shining light on “DISC” distributed idea suppression complex

Scientists study phenomena to REVEAL them—we ought study scientists to REVEAL phenomena of scientists who SUPPRESS (& why) https://nature.com/articles/d41586-020-00500-y

Wolfejosh-X-post-1234820077213622273-ESL2TxDWsAIXHEl.jpg

11:37 AM · Mar 3, 2020

@EricRWeinstein

The first clue is “98% said they considered peer review important or extremely important”.

Ahem. 98% is the kind of numbers dictators put up in sham elections.

Study the history here. This is the journal that wouldn’t Peer Review the Double Helix.

This mob is perfectly wrong.

3:59 PM · Mar 3, 2020

2021

@EricRWeinstein

Google’s Ngram viewer is an astounding tool for figuring out how much your own mind is fully brainwashed by respectable voices and institutions.

No one was talking about “refereed journals” before the mid 1960s. This is a fad that doesn’t work. Unless your last name is Maxwell.

10:59 PM · Jul 21, 2021

@EricRWeinstein

“Why don’t people trust science, scientists, peer review and data like they used to do in earlier eras as our most reliable source of ground truth? We’re in a life and death pandemic after all!”

I don’t know. Let me think about that.

9:00 AM · Sep 25, 2021

Our new issue is here! On the cover—'Periods on display' and the cultural movement against menstrual shame and #PeriodPoverty.

Plus, @WHO air quality guidelines, low #BackPain management, community-acquired bacterial #meningitis, and more. Read: http://hubs.li/H0Y33_L0

TheLancet-X-post-1441372277786951681-FAC9inOXEAAlLXx.jpg

12:01 PM · Sep 24, 2021

@EricRWeinstein

It might not be a problem if trust were high.

If you STILL feel that the WHO is a simple health organization, @EcoHealthNYC is merely an ecological charity, peer review works in gain of function, etc., you aren’t bothered by much of ANYTHING.

It’s the rest of us I’m addressing.

11:58 PM · Oct 1, 2021

Conrad Goehausen 🌊🌊⚡💘⚡🌊🌊 #FBR

@conradgoehausen

How is using a photo setup in any way significant to the topic? Or are you claiming that the booster shot wasn't real? Or are you just being meta-ironic?

11:09 PM · Oct 1, 2021

@EricRWeinstein

I’m making the point that trust is *THE* issue. Many of the unvaccinated have taken vaccines their whole lives. For those folks, this is the first Vaccine they don’t trust. Think about that. We are labeling people crackpots and anti-vaxxers who have been multiply vaccinated.

11:58 PM · Oct 1, 2021

@EricRWeinstein

If trust is the issue, don’t fake a backdrop with phony windows. Use a curtain. Use a panel. Use a photo op in a garden. But don’t fake anything. It breaks trust. You have to Build it instead.

No part of this is difficult to understand if you want buy-in.

Have a great weekend.

11:58 PM · Oct 1, 2021

@EricRWeinstein

I have been warning you about Peer Review. Because almost no one says this, it sounds crazy.

Dr Daszak & @EcoHealthNYC have been thoroughly Peer Reviewed and are endorsed by the highest levels of scientists. It’s ‘preposterous’ to question a decision to terminate their funding.

5:40 PM · Oct 6, 2021

2022

2023

2024

2025

@EricRWeinstein

Q: Why do I not back down when experts tell me I'm an idiot?

A: Mobs of credentialed experts are OFTEN just *TOTALLY* wrong in their very area of exerptise. They tend to reinforce each other in their certainties.

In particular, *SCIENTISTS ARE FLAT OUT WRONG* on "Peer Review":

Melinda-Baldwin-Peer-Review-Scholarly-Kitchen-GtB-mQUagAAEpyl.jpg

9:16 PM · Jun 9, 2025

@EricRWeinstein

So, please, lecture me on Peer Review and how it has always been here in science. Just perserverate that same thing over and over and over again. I'm here for you.

When your head is often filled with malware, at least take a moment to figure out how much you want to teach someone else "with receipts" who isn't backing down.

9:25 PM · Jun 9, 2025

@EricRWeinstein

Peer Review is a *RECENT*, unwanted, disastorous, administrative rewriting of research science culture. If you want to know what kills progress, it's this.

Source of image: Interview with Melinda Baldwin at the "Scholarly Kitchen".

https://scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/2018/09/26/the-rise-of-peer-review-melinda-baldwin-on-the-history-of-refereeing-at-scientific-journals-and-funding-bodies/

9:25 PM · Jun 9, 2025

@EricRWeinstein

People who lie about the research of others cannot be referees. Period. And that lying is absolutely everywhere.

This is why we stagnate.

If you put consensus scientists in charge, you always stagnate innovation. The consensus is VERY often wrong.

We had it more right before.

9:32 PM · Jun 9, 2025

Relevant Essays and Papers

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

See Also

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