alt Hacker NewsPart of the problem is we got tricked into thinking "peer reviewed" meant "true," or at least something like it.
It doesn't. Not even close.
Peer review doesn't even mean that it's free from errors, free from fraud, free from methodological mischief; it doesn't mean anything at this point. Yet we continue to act like it does.
Darwin's work wasn't peer reviewed. Nor Einstein's. It's something we cooked up in the mid 1900's to deal with the fallout from another mistake ("publish or perish") that meant people had to try to publish even if they had nothing to say.
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> Part of the problem is we got tricked into thinking "peer reviewed" meant "true," or at least something like it.
No actual working scientist thinks this.
“Glitchc” has it right elsewhere in this thread: the motivating force behind journals is prominence and reputation, not truth.
Don't know why you are being downvoted, you are largely correct. I've provided plenty of evidence in another post in this thread showing that journal-based peer review is highly farcical.
EDIT: I still want review from a community of scientific peers. I just don't want this review to be in the hands of a tiny number of gatekeepers entangled with journals that largely just slow things down.
> Darwin's work wasn't peer reviewed. Nor Einstein's
Except it was…? This is absurdly ahistorical and the fact that you cross disciplines in trying to make an incorrect argument questions whether you are in science at all.
The structure of peer review in Darwin’s time was different, where experts wrote monographs and gave lectures at symposia that then led to letters among their peers. Which is what happens now, if you take a step back.
The volume of new work these days is incompatible with the older informal system, and is in some ways our new paradigm is superior as there is a formal period in which new works are reviewed.