On Fri, Dec 03, 2010 at 10:18:26AM -0800, glen e. p. ropella wrote: > > On a tangent, however, I found this article interesting: > > Citizens Against Peer Review > http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/intersection/2010/12/03/citizens-against-peer-review/ > > > But it does bring up the point that we humans do as little work as we > can get away with. We're lazy. We won't dig into any subject unless we > must, for whatever reason. The reviewers will dig in deeper than the > lay person (mostly) because it's their job/profession to do so. Oh > sure, they may have chosen that job/profession based on some inherent > energy or curiosity about the domain; but in the end, they have > groceries to buy on the way home, yards to rake, burnt out light bulbs > to change, etc. So, they really do have to commit to work like this. >
I weas fine with this, until I got to this bit. No scientist will do peer review for the sake of paying bills. In fact it seems to be the fashion not to do any work for peer reviewing, and just make snap judgements, as it takes you away from the 'real science' (ie writing research grant proposals to lure the grad students). They'll do it because they're fundamentally interested in science, and want to give back to the scientific community by returning the courtesy some other reviewer has given them. But career scientists don't, so the peer review process is often just a waste of time, or sometimes even positively catty. Sorry for the snarky comments :(. -- ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Prof Russell Standish Phone 0425 253119 (mobile) Mathematics UNSW SYDNEY 2052 [email protected] Australia http://www.hpcoders.com.au ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
