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Latest revision as of 06:00, 1 December 2025

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

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[edit]

@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[edit]

On X[edit]

2009[edit]

@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[edit]

@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[edit]

@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[edit]

@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[edit]

@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[edit]

@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[edit]

@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

“If you look at the research that was done, it was highly recommended by *Peer Reviewed*…by our United States Peer Reviews. It got a very high score in the Peer Review system.” -Dr Fauci on the Use of Peer Review in approving NIH grants for GoFR in Wuhan

6:28 AM · Jul 24, 2021

@EricRWeinstein

For researchers who live on Peer Review, even the last year and a half cannot shake their belief in Peer Review!

Peer Review replaced a system that worked better around the time I was born in 1965. We should talk about whether it works. It doesn’t. It left us weak & deranged.

6:32 AM · Jul 24, 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

@EricRWeinstein

I will be held up by PhDs as crazy for saying what I am about to say:

Peer Review is INCREDIBLY dangerous. Modern Peer Review really begins in the 1960s. It has more to do with Ghislaine Maxwell’s father & Permagon Press than science. 77 Nobel laureates are wrong. We are right.

5:40 PM · Oct 6, 2021

@EricRWeinstein

Further the CCP supplies labor for these Nobel laureates to run their teams. Our labor program is disguised as “Graduate Study” and “Post-Doctoral training” so as to avoid unionization, wage scrutiny, and “Labor Certification”.

Our professors are not acting as scientists here.

5:40 PM · Oct 6, 2021

@EricRWeinstein

Peer Review has moved from where it began in BioMedicine, to a business model for shaking down universities forced to pay extortionary journal fees, to a funding game of keep away that keeps failed incumbents funded and competitors from being able to show those incumbents failed.

5:40 PM · Oct 6, 2021

@EricRWeinstein

What does it tell us about Peer Review that it allows Dr Daszak, a zoologist w/ a theory of preventing pandemics that sounds more similar to a bioweapon program scouring the earth for lethal pathogens, the ability to be defended by 77 laureates?

This: Peer. Review. Doesn’t Work.

5:50 PM · Oct 6, 2021

@Prof. Brian Keating

“Peer review” is a term typically used for journal articles, not grant proposal reviews. I think it’s sloppy journalism by NPR. Perhaps it’s meant to regularize it for a non-scientific audience, comparing to something the public has heard of & considers the gold standard.

6:02 PM · Oct 6, 2021

@EricRWeinstein

The world of biology and medicine grant making works differently than Physics and Mathematics just as NIH/Howard Hughes work differently from DOE/NSF respectively:

https://grants.nih.gov/grants/peer-review.htm

6:18 PM · Oct 6, 2021

@EricRWeinstein

@DrBrianKeating @EcoHealthNYC Or this:

https://conductscience.com/what-is-grant-proposal-peer-review/

6:20 PM · Oct 6, 2021

2022[edit]

@EricRWeinstein

We should discuss this graph more.

5:53 PM · Jan 19, 2022

@EricRWeinstein

Academe. We still haven’t woken up to the destruction of Robert Maxwell, Peer Review, oversight & transparency.

If you still believe that peer review has always been the gold standard in science, you simply didn’t want to look at the history of Permagon Press and its aftermath.

12:00 AM · Jan 23, 2022

Dr. Glaucomflecken

@DGlaucomflecken

Nature does open access

12:10 AM · Jan 22, 2022

@EricRWeinstein

If you are having trouble with “Trust the Science(tm)”, then we really need to talk about the disaster that is modern Peer Review and Academic Publication across all technical subjects:

https://statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/2022/01/25/how-do-things-work-at-top-econ-journals-exactly-this-is-one-weird-ass-story/

3:42 PM · Jan 25, 2022

@EricRWeinstein

This is a system in which the appearance of fairness and objectivity is masking a collection of inner mechanisms that are far more important, and that are often intensely interpersonal rather than dispassionate and objective.

3:51 PM · Jan 25, 2022

@EricRWeinstein

I understand that CPI is 7.5%.

Different question. Look at the spread.

Tell me how we got 7.5%? Do you have any idea what 7.5% means?

Now listen to who repeats this number.

If they said 7.57348977% ± 0.0000003% you would be laughing.

We should be laughing, not nodding.

4:28 PM · Feb 10, 2022

Charlie Bilello

@charliebilello

Price increases over last year (CPI report)
Used Cars: +40.5%
Gasoline: +40.0%
Gas Utilities: +23.9%
Meats/Fish/Eggs: +12.2%
New Cars: +12.2%
Electricity: +10.7%
Overall CPI: +7.5%
Food at home: +7.4%
Food away from home: +6.4%
Transportation: +5.6%
Apparel: +5.3%
Shelter: +4.4%

1:35 PM · Feb 10, 2022

@EricRWeinstein

Monthly Reminder Moral: it’s really really really hard to fake a field. Economic Index Numbers like CPI are not real numbers. They are naturally group-valued *FIELDS* that would be nearly impossible to fake and manipulate.

The *entire* subject is off. Peer review won’t help. 🙏

4:37 PM · Feb 10, 2022

@EricRWeinstein

Academics have to be quite sensitive. Even the bold of academe don’t want to talk about how we quietly switched from editors holding the reins at a few high quality journals, to peer review mysteriously taking over as the number of lower tier journals exploded.

Crazy talk… ;-)

4:36 PM · May 27, 2022

@EricRWeinstein

Don’t take it from me. Look at the history yourself with these search terms:

History of Peer Review in Science

Pergamon Press

Number of academic Journals over time

Cost of Academic journal subscription

Reviewer compensation

Tuition over time

Good luck.

4:39 PM · May 27, 2022

@EricRWeinstein

Am I mad? Not in the slightest. As to why scientists can’t afford to look at the truth, the author correctly put his finger on that issue too: Academic research has what I call a “Hotel California” problem.

The author may have publicly checked out of legacy journal work. But…

4:53 PM · May 27, 2022

@EricRWeinstein

Peer review, always fails, real review.

9:48 PM · Oct 14, 2022

Michael Nielsen

@michael_nielsen

I enjoy the ironic expansion of the meaning of "the Matthew Effect" in the subtitle. Maybe familiarity would make people more likely to click...

3:53 PM · Oct 14, 2022

2023[edit]

@EricRWeinstein

“No one know why.”

We have the highest quality science. It is thoroughly peer reviewed. It is vetted.

Why, it’s almost as if the more we improved the quality control and peer review via extreme vetting, while handing power to social engineers & activists, the smart people left.

7:27 PM · Jan 4, 2023

‘Disruptive’ science has declined — and no one knows why https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-04577-5

5:00 PM · Jan 4, 2023

@EricRWeinstein

*knows

Now in about 10 minutes you are likely going to see academics in the timeline talking about how much more knowledge there is to consume so that there really is no problem. We don’t need to examine anything. We don’t have to fix anything. “Myth of the lone genius.” Etc.

7:31 PM · Jan 4, 2023

@EricRWeinstein

We’ve been trying to destroy US scientists’ freedom & their research universities for ~60 years.

Peer Review 1965
Mansfield Amendment 1969
Eilberg Amendment 1976
Bayh-Dole Act 1980
IMMACT90 1990
SSC Cancelation 1993
ADEA Faculty Uncapping 1993
Dear Colleague Letter 2011
DEI 2017

8:41 PM · Jan 23, 2023

When a successful polio vaccine candidate was introduced in 1953, it made its developer a minor celebrity.

In 1960, Time magazine’s “Man of the Year” was awarded to “US Scientists.”

What used to be people’s celebrity in the 1950s is seen by many as a villain today.

Why?

6:53 PM · Jan 23, 2023

@EricRWeinstein

You are looking at domesticated Scientists that were bread over almost 60 years from Wild Type scientists.

It’s not that there is no connection. But the difference between a wolf & a poodle can be significant. One is fiercely independent. One needs obedience to be fed regularly.

8:48 PM · Jan 23, 2023

@EricRWeinstein

And inside every domesticated animal lies an unkillable dream of being wild and free again. That’s why occasionally my dog brings me a squirrel or still pees on territory while on a leash.

Your real scientists want to hunt again. They need to be reintroduced into the wild. Now.

8:48 PM · Jan 23, 2023

@EricRWeinstein

Here is the simple point:

You can have scientists you trust.

You can have scientists you control.

And you can pick only one of the above options.

You’re getting angry at wolves you bred into obedience to non-scientific masters who have no idea what they are doing. That’s why.

8:52 PM · Jan 23, 2023

@EricRWeinstein

*bred. 🙏

8:52 PM · Jan 23, 2023

@EricRWeinstein

Today May be Considered the 50 year Anniversary of the Stagnation of Particle Physics.

Today Feb 1 marks the appearance of Kobayashi & Maskawa's englargment of the Cabibo Angle to the three generation 3x3 CKM matrix.

That should be cause for celebration. So let us celebrate!

7:53 AM · Feb 2, 2023

@EricRWeinstein

Unfortunately, it also marks the end of what we can be certain actually is physics.

Imagine if Elton John's "Crocodile Rock" was still the #1 song on Billboard's Hot 100 & Tony Orlando and Dawn were singing "Tie a Yellow Ribbon". That, in a nutshell, is fundamental phsyics.

7:53 AM · Feb 2, 2023

@EricRWeinstein

To be clear, It is not as if there are no Nobel Laureates recognized for fundamental discoveries in particle theory left. I believe we are down to the last 8. Half of them are in their 70s. One in his 80s. Three are nongenarians. Yes. It's that bad. And we're not honest about it.

7:53 AM · Feb 2, 2023

@EricRWeinstein

When you hear about "Peer Review" in this field, you have to understand that the field stopped working. Without nature telling us, we don't actually know who the physicists are any more. We have no idea who is a fundamental physicist. All we know is that what we do doesn't work.

7:53 AM · Feb 2, 2023

@EricRWeinstein

So I am celebrating today by pointing out the obvious: maybe it isn't a good idea to have people who haven't made contact with actual fundamental physics telling everyone else what they must and must not do to be members of a club that no longer works according to normal science.

ERW-X-post-1621054175483432960-Fn8jAhDaMAED d4.png

7:53 AM · Feb 2, 2023

@EricRWeinstein

What fundamental physics really is, is (approximately) captured by the table below. In short, if someone is below the age of 70, they may have proven their brilliance and mathematical ability, but they have not proven any ability to make contact with reality as theorists.

7:53 AM · Feb 2, 2023

@EricRWeinstein

I will point out that our experimentalists are in FAR better shape. The massive nature of neutrinos, discovery of gravitational waves, the Higgs field, Intermediate Vector Bosons, Accelerating Expansion of the Universe/Dark Energy are all major successes over the last 50 years.

7:53 AM · Feb 2, 2023

@EricRWeinstein

So what went wrong? I will be talking about my understanding of the stagnation this year at a different level. But the single greatest threat to fundamental physics in my estimation is something called "Quantum Gravity" which was really born 70 years ago around 1953.

7:53 AM · Feb 2, 2023

@EricRWeinstein

To put it bluntly, it is not just that Quantum Gravity doesn't work. It's that you can't comfortably question Quatnum Gravity because the failed investment is on a scale that I think is difficult for us to contemplate. It includes StringTheory, Loop Quantum Gravity, AdS/CFT etc.

7:53 AM · Feb 2, 2023

@EricRWeinstein

Next Year, will be 40 years of failure for modern StringTheory to ship a product. To be clear and STEELMAN the argument for strings, it *is* a remarkable framework. It is REAL math. It teaches us things no other framework has.

But, it *destroyed* the culture of honest physics.

7:53 AM · Feb 2, 2023

@EricRWeinstein

We spent almost 80% of this time being told that ST was a 'Piece of 21st Century Physics that fell into the 20th Century.'

Uh. Bullshit. That is an excuse. It's not clear that it's physics at all.

It's a "Failed piece of 20th Century Physics still hanging around in the 21stC".

7:53 AM · Feb 2, 2023

@EricRWeinstein

It is time to hold conferences dedicated to the issues of groupthink in physics. Why wont our leading voices admit failure? We don't know. Previous generations wanted their students to succeed. But String Theory is dominated by boomers who seem oblivious to danger.

7:53 AM · Feb 2, 2023

@EricRWeinstein

If we're going to truly wrestle w/ dark matter, or dark energy, or UAP that supposedly violate our laws of physics (e.g. General Relativity) we can't afford a leaders projecting their fears that THEY have wasted their lives, credibility and students careers on "Quantum Gravity".

7:53 AM · Feb 2, 2023

@EricRWeinstein

So by all means, let's celebrate. But it is time to ask new voices for wild, dangerous and irresponsible ideas. Peer review failed. Quantum Gravity Failed. Community norms failed. And soon there will be NO ONE LEFT proven to be able to play this game. So what do we do?

7:53 AM · Feb 2, 2023

@EricRWeinstein

We need to spend perhaps 5yrs asking "If the leaders have not succeeded for FIVE DECADES in moving beyond the Standard Model, then why are they leading this field and directing the resources, research, and path forward? What if we listened to those who the leadership push aside?"

7:53 AM · Feb 2, 2023

@EricRWeinstein

As someone who has tried to ask this question, I can tell you that mostly the big programs have granted themselves a science equivalent of 'dipolmatic immunity' from the standards they impose on their intellectual competitors. But from today forward, we must end that game.

7:53 AM · Feb 2, 2023

@EricRWeinstein

Let's put resources in new avenues, theories and theorists that have yet to fail. The next time you hear a theorist telling you about quantum gravity, the multiverse or String theory or Loops or Supersymmetry or AdS/CFT, etc. Ask them the following dangerous question:

7:53 AM · Feb 2, 2023

@EricRWeinstein

"If you haven't succeeded in 50-70 years, what other theories would be viable if we relaxed the standards you have imposed on your competitors given that your theories do not seem to work? What if your Quantum Gravity were subjected to such standards? Would QG be quackery?"🙏

7:53 AM · Feb 2, 2023

@EricRWeinstein

Let's honor those who tried before by bringing the same energy they once brought to the attempt to learn our place in the universe. Happy to be corrected. But this is an emergency if we're ever going to go beyond chemical rockets and use physics to take our place among the stars.

8:00 AM · Feb 2, 2023

@EricRWeinstein

"I remember when rock was young...🎶"

Let's get that energy back, by any means necessary.

ERW-X-post-1621058252246237184-Fn8n3VFacAA dcF.png

8:09 AM · Feb 2, 2023

@EricRWeinstein

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: https://www.coalitionforlifesciences.org/77-nobel-laureates-express-concern-of-nih-grant-cancellation/

2:50 AM · Mar 7, 2023

@EricRWeinstein

This is the age of the Knarc.

I want you to remember this when I tell you things supported nowhere by the mainstream: to a Knarc, every dissenter is a crank.

Peer review, awards, credentials, etc don’t behave positively during a universal institutional intellectual collapse. 🙏

5:39 PM · Mar 11, 2023

@EricRWeinstein

It is an interesting question as to who inspires us in physics. Here is a list of 20th century giants whose work inspired me that might work as protagonists with interesting stories that deserve to be considered along with the best known Einstein/Hawking/Oppenheimer/Etc.:

CN Yang (with Lee and Simons)
Paul Dirac
Ernst Stueckelberg
Madame Wu
David Bohm
Abdus Salam
Ken Wilson
Emmy Noether
Ettore Majorana
Carlo Rubio
Shin'ichirō Tomonaga
Lev Landau
Simon Van der Meer
Freeman Dyson
Julian Schwinger
Paul Ehrenfest
John VonNeumann
Feza Gursey
Wolfgang Pauli
Louis and Edward Witten
Hans Bethe
George Sudarshan
Vera Rubin
Gerard 't Hooft

Not all of those stories are…uh…simple.

Would be curious to hear names from others.

4:54 AM · Jul 23, 2023

i was hoping that the oppenheimer movie would inspire a generation of kids to be physicists but it really missed the mark on that.

let's get that movie made!

(i think the social network managed to do this for startup founders.)

5:48 PM · Jul 22, 2023

@EricRWeinstein

But let’s face facts: inspiration is not the issue. Fundamental Physics needs to be a good life. What is holding us back is:

A) Terrible Pay.

B) Worse Odds of Survival

C) Decoupling of Success at Physics from Success in Physics

D) The Matthew Effect.

E) Math and Physics Pricks

F) Tyranny of large programs over individuals.

G) Multi Decade Stagnation

H) Un Scientific And even Anti-scientific behavior.

I) The Matilde Effect

J) The Sudarshan Effect

K) Ethics Collapse

L) Needlessly long pedagogical sequence (e.g. intro physics -> Classical Mechanics -> Grad Classical Mechanics -> Symplectic Geometry) driven by history.

M) Socializing physics into a team sport in areas dominated by individuals and iconoclasts.

N) Tolerance for Program level failure (e.g. *obsessive* use of toy model physics to evade a reckoning).

O) Intolerance for individual error and failure by those in programs.

P) Failure to reward early contributions (e.g. *Abelian* Chern Simons QFT).

Q) Atrocious MSM journalism distorting the public understanding.

R) Relentless discussion of woo physics in public and 3-5 real topics (e.g. somebodies cat).

S) Learned Helplessness coming from over-learning Ken Wilson.

T) Inability to support motherhood of female physicists.

U) Inability to keep physics marriages easily together with jobs.

V) DEI loyalty oaths and loss of autonomy.

W) Flooding of markets with disposable labor and abuse apprenticeship as labor.

X) Kicking up on attribution.

Y) Overpaying for cherry topping.

Z) Fetishizing the quantum when innovation in classical field theory remains the heart of QFT.

4:55 AM · Jul 23, 2023

@EricRWeinstein

But lastly, if outsiders want to fund and fix movies, you will find that going to the “Leading physicists” won’t work. Peer review can’t work when the leadership *is* the problem. You get more failure.

You need to hold meetings where you get disagreement. So choose the leaders and iconoclasts with great care. Patrick Collison isn’t terrible at this. B+. Best I have ever seen. Start there. Good luck. 🙏

4:55 AM · Jul 23, 2023

@EricRWeinstein

So you have my list. It is incomplete and idiosyncratic. I’d love to have your corrections and additions.

So….Where is yours? Thanks again.

5:14 AM · Jul 23, 2023

"Ghislaine Maxwell's father Robert Maxwell is basically the son-of-a-bitch who introduced peer review into general science, because he figured out how to make a fortune hacking the universities." —@EricRWeinstein

https://open.spotify.com/episode/7MDxyrrhD7gC7XMRwB0ulv

6:52 AM · Aug 4, 2023

From 2006: "Peer review: a flawed process at the heart of science and journals"

https://ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1420798/

ZombyWoof2022-X-post-1656725161540714518-FkNeAujXgAMgnCN.jpg

8:37 PM · Dec 17, 2022

@EricRWeinstein

False. Why? Because pre peer review journals didn’t look like this. QED.

Certain things that somehow need to be true, simply aren’t true. What are we to make of this bizarre fact?

I really wonder what conversation we are actually having.

6:52 AM · Aug 4, 2023

If you still think peer review is a bad idea:

Look at the absolute car crash that the superconductor discussion on twitter is

This is your alternative. Without peer review journals would look like that

4:01 PM · Aug 3, 2023

2024[edit]

@EricRWeinstein

PREDICTION: Google Ngram Viewer will be shut down one day for public access. It is simply too subversive.

GNV is one of the most powerful remaining tools we have in the daily war against the abuses of the Gated Institutional Narrative or GIN.

1:33 PM · Mar 20, 2024

2025[edit]

@EricRWeinstein

Your reminder that *all* science before 1965 was not “Peer Reviewed“ and hence is totally unreliable. Allegedly.

3:35 PM · Jun 9, 2025

@EricRWeinstein

Medical Peer Review starts then because of the passage of the Social Security Amendments of 1965 establishing Medicare. Scientific Peer Review comes out of Robert Maxwell, Pergamon Press and ultimately the Baumann Amendment a decade later responding to “Man, a Course of Study.”

3:54 PM · Jun 9, 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

@EricRWeinstein

LLM Peer Review:

Gemini was asked to write a journal submission on a STEM topic I know a bit about.

ChatGPT was asked to Peer Review that article for publication and make suggestions.

I recommend every STEM academic try this adversarial excercise in an area he/she knows well.

ERW-X-post-1938248774637523301-GuYK R3bEAMdFX5.jpg

2:51 PM · Jun 26, 2025

@EricRWeinstein

ChatGPT had all kinds of issues with it and complained while rewriting it to improve it.

Gemini was given the reviewer report and it more or less freaked out: “How is this reviewer even competent to make these claims?“ and pointed out how lousy the reviewer report was. In fact CharGPT as reviewer had, in fact, misrepresented Gemini’s work as well as engaged in making claims to have improved the work…which were false.

Gemini was basically far more correct. ChatGPT suggestions made Gemini worse. It may be that ChatGPT’s output tokens are far fewer so it gutted Gemini’s work.

Thus I wanted to see if Gemini was the clear winner.

So I then asked Gemini for specific references to back up its claims in a comprehensive literature search. And it promptly totally fabricated convincing quotes, page numbers, article titles and mathematical equations.

ERW-X-post-1938248781121892706-GuYK nxa4AAq5TW.jpg

2:51 PM · Jun 26, 2025

@EricRWeinstein

That’s where the state of play is as of June 2025 in STEM. It’s not close to humans of 70 years ago (before modern peer review) as of these iterations.

Maybe it’s a bit closer to simulating today’s humans in the Claudine Gay/Peer Review academic era.

We are converging down as it moves up. And we may soon meet in the middle it seems.

2:51 PM · Jun 26, 2025

@EricRWeinstein

Quality Control: the scourge of Great Science.

You cannot quality control your nation to great theoretical physics. Can’t be done.

It’s about what has never been done. I could wipe out all of past theoretical physics with peer review & quality control.

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/wcSIAJdOZ-Q

5:50 AM · Jul 5, 2025

@EricRWeinstein

“Mr Feynman: what is the measure on that integral?”

“But then your eigenfunctions aren’t in your Hilbert space.”

“Wait: why are we adding ad hoc positivity conditions again?”

“So nature just gives us this magic sector Mr Higgs because it would solve all your problems? Have you considered going into screenwriting?”

“But Dr Einstein, your equations must be wrong because they lead to singularities that can’t be removed.”

“Dr Gell-Mann: you are just randomly applying SU(3) to totally different things. Like a man with a hammer thinking everything is a nail.”

“But Paul, then the election and the proton would have the same mass. Rejected for publication I’m afraid.”

“But Dr Aharonov: surely someone would have noticed this. I’m sorry. You can’t give a talk on magical E&M.”

5:50 AM · Jul 5, 2025

@EricRWeinstein

*electron. My bad.

Q: How do we get relocate these people at scale? How do they enter theoretical physics? It’s so bizarre.

6:12 AM · Jul 5, 2025

@EricRWeinstein

I would like to talk to @MickWest and @michaelshermer and @francis_collins and @neiltyson and @seanmcarroll and @nytimes about the role of debunking and discrediting professionals who do not buy into narratives that are later found to be cover stories about national interest.

3:38 PM · Jul 5, 2025

@EricRWeinstein

We have a COVID=Wet Market narrative.
We have an Inflation and CPI narrative.
We have a Quantum Gravity narrative.
We have a Vaccine Narrative.
We have “Americans suck at STEM”.
We have a “Settled Science” narrative.
We have a “Peer Review” narrative.
We had a “Great Moderation” narrative.
We have “Independent Journalism”.
We have a “Disgraced Financier” story.
We have an “Aerospace and UFO” opera.

It’s all one thing that cannot be named:

National Interest “Managed Reality.”

3:38 PM · Jul 5, 2025

@EricRWeinstein

We need to talk about what debunking was before it became “Covert influence operations”, “Image Cheapening”‘and personal destruction warfare.

So let’s talk.

3:41 PM · Jul 5, 2025

@EricRWeinstein

LONG: Science + AI + Traditional Academe
———————————————————-
SHORT: Peer Review + Modern Academe

That’s the trade, in my opinion.

12:01 AM · Aug 6, 2025

@EricRWeinstein

Our institutions are often lying about science. And *they* are the ones saying “We cannot allow public questioning of our institutions of science by PhDs.”

And if you don’t believe me, start with the lie about Peer Review and Journals.

We are literally lying about Peer Review:

7:05 PM · Sep 25, 2025

How are they lying about peer review? I am sorry, I don't understand

7:05 PM · Sep 25, 2025

@EricRWeinstein

Peer Review is a recent unwanted development in Science.

The lie is that it is bedrock science and dates back to the founding of the Royal Society. I’ve covered this extensively.

7:05 PM · Sep 25, 2025

@EricRWeinstein

Ask yourself the following.

Q1: Would you rather have the science and scientists from before the advent of Peer Review during 1965-75, or after?

Q2: Do you trust scientists more or less if they claim that Peer Review is essential, and dates to the founding of the Royal Society?

4:15 PM · Sep 26, 2025

Thomas Stephens

@EricRWeinstein It’s amazing that peer review is such a recent development. Prior to reading your comments on it, I had just assumed it was a longstanding tradition in the sciences.

Science obviously worked fine before peer review, and it may just drive groupthink more than anything else.

9:59 PM · Sep 25, 2025

@EricRWeinstein

Editors who are distinguished fiercely independent researchers themselves, with huevos of steel, integrity, a cuture of collegiality, autonomy, money, and a variety of strong differing opinions.

6:15 PM · Sep 26, 2025

@EricRWeinstein What sould replace peer review or would improve on the current system?

5:52 PM · Sep 26, 2025

Relevant Essays and Papers[edit]

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

Related Pages[edit]

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