I would like to break with the "discussion" mode of Ecolog, and suggest one
case where the forum becomes an active campaign bringing pressure for change.
Recent messages have reflected a long-simmering and increasing sense that the
peer review system for publication is breaking down as a useful method of
gatekeeping. The vast increase in throughput means that referees are, one
suspects, harder to find, more likely to give cursory readings and respond from
the gut, and even less experienced. It has also, apparently, become acceptable
for referees to reject papers simply because they don't like the ideas,
something subtly but importantly different from bad science. And many other
problems that have been hinted at. However, I am not convinced that the
journals themselves can be expected to do anything about this. Journals are
not a public service, they operate in a market environment. Peer review
obviously MOSTLY works as a gatekeeping system, and so there are insufficient
market forces to cause policy changes. But I invite readers to ask themselves
whether journals should be a SERVICE TO THE SCIENTIFIC (and broader) COMMUNITY,
rather than a player in a market. If you think yes, then by implication,
journals should respond to the desires of the scientific community, as a
government belongs to the people and must respond to the desires of the people.
If the scientific community were to come together and express its desires
and dissatisfactions in a concrete and organized way, rather than as
gentlemanly threads of discussion, it seems to me that something could actually
be done. I therefore humbly suggest the launch of CAMFRED, the campaign for
real editing in scientific journals. The goal of the campaign is to improve the
peer review system. But since you can never be sure what a reviewer will say,
the true onus lies on journal editors to have transparent, enforceable
standards (and unfortunately, to spend more time assessing the quality of
reviews). Hence the E in CAMFRED. If there is interest, I will need two
things. Firstly, I'll need to assemble a group of people interested in running
this. As the initiator, of course I'll be involved if it takes wing, but I
can't do it on my own. Secondly, I suggest that as a start, we collate a
clear definition of what reviewers should and should not do, in the opinion of
the wider scientific community. My favourite examples are that rejection should
always be based on scientific rigour, never on personal disagreement. I have
other ideas but those can be part of the final document. Such a document, if
well supported, would be a powerful source of pressure. CAMFRED will then
expand to address other editing and reviewer issues it considers important.
HumblyAnthony Waldron
Date: Sat, 11 Jul 2009 17:39:34 -0400
Subject: Re: [ECOLOG-L] SCIENCE as intellectual discipline An open discussion
Authority Is it compatible with science?
From: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
CC: [email protected]
Wow, Anthony! Your thoughts are very clearly and vividly expressed.
I think it would be especially useful if we could have more discussion on
your point about the role of journal editors, since they are the gate keepers.
Most of us believe we can come to sound judgments about articles in our field,
but we only see the articles that editors let by. Additionally, editors
usually decide what articles even get sent out for peer review and they pick
the reviewers.
I know we need gatekeepers; otherwise we'd be flooded with junk, but have
we found the most efficient way to find the nuggets of value that are
occasionally mixed in with the junk but are disguised in some way (i.e., aren't
what we are used to looking for).
2009/7/11 Anthony Waldron <[email protected]>
I've found myself thinking about this a lot recently. This has not been a noble
metaphysical endeavour on my part, don't nobody get me wrong. I started from a
forum question I was going to post myself: Should journal editors be tasked to
distinguish between referees who simply don't agree with an idea (and so reject
a paper), and genuine refereeing that recognizes that data and methods are
sound, but will always be open to differences in interpretation?
Currently, I don't think there is any such hard and fast distinction.
We would like to think that today, Galileo would be published in Science,
because we are so raised in nobility that we will immediately recognize and
promote new ideas.
I think not. Old hands in this field are constantly commenting on those of
their colleagues who are also Lords of Science, but who have developed such a
strong world view that everything is read through the lens of their opinion.
Let he who is without sin cast the first stone. There is in Literature circles
something called "reader theory", asserting that human being are incapable of
reading something without interpreting it according to their own beliefs and
prejudices. The idea of our being raised above our predecessors in intellectual
nobility, essentially asserts that scientists are immune from reader theory. If
so, then why is the idea of a "paradigm", that highest exemplar of the lens of
belief and prejudice, an invention that took place in my own lifetime? I could
even play Devil's Advocate here, and suggest that Kuhn and Capra made such a
meal out of the idea of paradigms, because of their enormous prevalence in the
time that we are living.
Galileo wouldn't be tortured today (no Bush jokes please). But he would be
serving blended coffee drinks to harried businessmen, having failed to achieve
even pre-tenure status on a blank publication record.
I'm not enough of a historian to assert whether we are getting better. But I
can say that, from my contemporary experience, personal viewpoints are held
religiously by scientists as strongly as by non-scientists. We live in a
belief-driven society, not one in which everyone goes around weighing the truth
of each opinion with careful objectivity. Belief is faster operationally, an
evolutionary efficiency that allows us to make snap decisions in a dangerous
world. The faster and more complex the world, the more belief's Gut will take
over from objective consideration. It would certainly seem that our world is
the fastest and most complex that the human brain has had to deal with yet.
Anthony Waldron
> Date: Fri, 10 Jul 2009 22:44:35 -0700
> From: [email protected]
> Subject: [ECOLOG-L] SCIENCE as intellectual discipline An open discussion
> Authority Is it compatible with science?
> To: [email protected]
>
> Honorable Forum:
>
> At the suggestion of one subscriber, I am taking the initiative in posting
> this on Ecolog initially to get the Open Discussion (OD) started. When it
> appears to fizzle, those interested can continue off-list if they wish, by
> emailing Meiss or myself.
>
> Martin Meiss' most fundamental (no pun intended) point seemed to be:
>
> ". . . we should be looking for something better than "Does this have the
> stamp of approval of people who think like I do?" We should be looking for
> something that is not just an encodement of "Does this violate the doctrine
> of my faith?" --Martin M. Meiss, Ecolog post, 7-9-2009
>
> While Meiss was referring to publishing, his comment is fundamental; it
> harkens to principle, a crucial divide that cleaves through human
> consciousness and behavior from the beginnings of culture to the present.
> And how we interpret this dichotomy may well be pivotal for our future and
> that of much of life on earth. But it is as fully understandable as it is
> tragic. Even our courts (or more accurately, especially our courts) court
> and countenance countless miscarriages of justice, not to mention every
> shred of human affairs and the systems they affect and effect.
> Authoritarianism is recognizable as the ultimate evil in fascism and Nazism,
> but embraced as the Holy Grail when sanctified by authority in the name of
> science.
>
> There is some ratio of high-level fakery to honest intellectual enquiry
> today as in, say, the time of Copernicus, but we don't know just what it is
> or was or whether it was greater then than now. Of course, wanting to save
> face for ourselves and ridicule the dead (save our heroes), we presume that
> we are more advanced today. But I wonder how the trajectory of integrity
> throughout history might be graphed? Is it a straight-line function of
> continuous betterment through time, or has it had its ups and downs? Have
> disciplines become more or less disciplined, more or less honest? What is
> the credibility quotient of science? Of the discipline of ecology?
>
> At one time, I suspect that ecologists were more monk-like, eschewing the
> grand life for the simple life, dedicated to the pursuit of understanding
> what the hell is actually going on out there. Maybe it was in Clements'
> time, for better or for worse, or maybe it is now, as ecologists struggle
> mightily in cyberspace impoverished and unappreciated. Maybe they are still
> monk-like. But maybe there are charlatans and knaves today as yesterday,
> foisting off cyber-alchemy upon the kings in exchange for a larger and
> larger largesse in the form of grants, secure in tenure, surrounded by
> indentured and obedient students, struggling to breathe free. I am not
> suggesting that all is going to hell in a handbasket, but I am suggesting
> that there just may be more Emperors sans raiments that we might prefer to
> imagine.
>
> I do not deign to revise Meiss' remarks, only to extend them--and to invite
> others to offer up answers to Meiss' "something better" than the fraction of
> science that remains or perhaps accelerates more deeply into the tyranny of
> Authoritarian Hierarchy. To put it another way, is "a scientific certainty"
> compatible with science as a feedback loop question? Is the sky falling or
> is all well or where in-between do we fall or stand? Is much of science,
> after all, yet another religion?
>
> WT
_________________________________________________________________
Enamórate este invierno con MSN Amor y Amistad
http://amor.latam.msn.com/channel/index.aspx?trackingid=202694
_________________________________________________________________
Vuelve famosa a tu mascota con MSN
http://events.latam.msn.com/tumascota
