Martin Meiss said:
This should be more than an exercise in rhetoric; we need
formulations that in simple terms expose the fundamentals of the process,
acknowledge its weaknesses, and distinguish it from phony imitators.
I sure don't have the answers, but I think that we as a community
could come up with them.
I don't think "could" is strong enough. We as a community MUST come up
with them.
> Mr. Hamazaki's example, whether it is accurate or not, illustrates
> one of my points. Just to get by in our professional lives, scientists
> must
> have "faith" in the social institutions, such as peer review, that we have
> created. And yet we all know that social institutions are inherently
> corruptible. Not only peer-review, but many other aspects of the practice
> of science, are rooted in these corruptible institutions.
> Besides the issue I raised earlier, that of becoming too complacent
> in our acceptance of our own perspective, there is the issue raised on the
> earlier posts of this thread: How to demonstrate to students (and other
> people who are not scientific professionals) that not all "peer review" is
> created equal. Some journalists, in an attempt to be fair-minded and
> objective, think they have to give equal time to holocaust deniers and to
> survivors of concentration camps. This same tendency will give equal
> weight
> to "our" and "their" peer-review processes.
> Imagine that you are in a debate on a talk show with an ideologue
> who
> cites dubious research results in a dubious journal, but claims that the
> work is peer-reviewed. What do you say? "That isn't REAL peer-review",
> "Is so!", "Is not!".
> Suppose the show host is smart and stops this and asks how to
> distinguish between valid and invalid peer review. What do you say?
> "We've
> been doing it this way for many years."? "This is the scientific
> consensus
> of how it should be done."? "This is the method used by people who think
> right"? Try to come up with a wording that would make sense to a lay
> audience and that couldn't be used by the opponent with equal
> plausibility,
> at least to the ears of the lay people whose taxes are funding your
> research.
> This should be more than an exercise in rhetoric; we need
> formulations that in simple terms expose the fundamentals of the process,
> acknowledge its weaknesses, and distinguish it from phony imitators.
> I sure don't have the answers, but I think that we as a community
> could come up with them.
>
> Martin
>
> 2009/7/8 Hamazaki, Hamachan (DFG) <[email protected]>
>
>> In regard to this issue, we should remind that we scientists also fall
>> into
>> this trap. In publishing a paper, we often look for a journal that has
>> high
>> probability of being published. In a way, all you need is several likely
>> minded peers to have your paper published in a peer-reviewed journal.
>>
>> Below is a quote:
>> Hilborn, R. 2006. Faith-based fisheries. Fisheries 31:554-555.
>>
>> A community of belief has arisen whose credo has become
>> “fisheries
>> management has failed, we need to abandon the old approaches and use
>> marine
>> protected areas and ecosystem-based management.” I fear that this
>> belief has
>> shaded the peer review process so badly that almost any paper showing a
>> significant decline in fish abundance or benefits of marine protected
>> areas
>> has a high probability of getting favorable reviews in some journals
>> regardless of the quality of the analysis. Critical peer review has been
>> replaced by faith-based support for ideas and too many scientists have
>> become advocates. An advocate knows the answer and looks for evidence to
>> support it; a scientist asks nature how much support there is for
>> competing
>> hypotheses.
>>
>> http://www.fisheries.org/afs/docs/fisheries/fisheries_3111.pdf
>>
>>
>> Toshihide "Hamachan" Hamazaki, PhD : 濱崎俊秀：浜ちゃん
>> Alaska Department of Fish & Game
>> Division of Commercial Fisheries
>> 333 Raspberry Rd. Anchorage, Alaska 99518
>> Ph: 907-267-2158
>> Fax: 907-267-2442
>> Cell: 907-440-9934
>> E-mail: [email protected]
>>
>
