Re: peer review
meksikatsi (zeroth@ix.netcom.com)
21 Jan 1995 18:17:55 GMT
In <845353478wnr@desco.demon.co.uk> Elaine@desco.demon.co.uk (Elaine
Morgan) writes:
>I cannot resist posting this quotation from the current issue of
>Science (p265)
>
>"Reviewers may be defensive about a manuscript that
>provides too large a deviation from received wisdom
>and perhaps even threatens the reigning paradigm. If
>you are brilliant enough to come up with such material
>it may be wise to publish it in less shocking increments
>or in a book."
>...the advice is good. It is also
>the best or only strategy for those whom the reviewers
>cannot bring themselves to regard as their peers
>
>
>Elaine Morgan
>
>
I will be a bit more blunt by pointing out that the magazine is also
obliquely referring to politics in science.
I am talking about the worst kind of politics, where the reviewer, in
their poisition of power, decides whether the idea is sound or the
treatment is worthy of the "reigning paradigm" because of his personal
position in the paradigm.
Every reader in this forum knows to what I refer.
I thought science was the pursuit of knowledge based on reality and
truth. Why is it so hard for some scientists to admit when they are
wrong, when it will benefit the common quest for knowledge? No one
cares about the error. Errors form part of the signposts which guide us
all to the truth.
meksikatsi
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