Re: [asa] Nature: Peer Review Trial and Debate

At 09:01 AM 6/14/2006, Rich Blinne wrote:

>On 6/13/06, Janice Matchett <janmatch@earthlink.net> wrote:
>>
>>
>>Much that passes for "peer review" today is merely political
>>payoff, so it's going to be fun to watch those who reject the
>>"consensus" opinions being allowed to open the curtain, let the
>>sunshine in, and start spraying the BSR into every nook and cranny.
>>~ Janice :).
>
>I believe a more open process is a good thing in order to show that
>Janice's perception is what is B.S. Let's take the following example
>....So, the "consensus" is challenged. Let's look at the peer
>review. I'll take reviewer 2 as an example of how a well-written
>paper can sucessfully challenge the conventional wisdom and how the
>interaction between author and reviewer improve the paper and is not
>some political payoff. Janice, where is the political payoff or BSR
>here? [snip] ~ Rich

@ My! That's a very "scientific" way to prove your case - just
provide anecdotal stories / examples. :)

National Academy of Sciences
(PNAS) 3/16/06 http://www.pnas.org/cgi/content/abstract/0600591103v1
Excerpt:
  "..We analyzed a very large set of molecular interactions that had
been derived automatically from biological texts. We found that
published statements, regardless of their verity, tend to interfere
with interpretation of the subsequent experiments and, therefore, can
act as scientific "microparadigms," similar to dominant scientific
theories [Kuhn, T. S. (1996) The Structure of Scientific Revolutions
(Univ. Chicago Press, Chicago)].

Using statistical tools, we measured the strength of the influence of
a single published statement on subsequent interpretations. We call
these measured values the momentums of the published statements and
treat separately the majority and minority of conflicting statements
about the same molecular event.

Our results indicate that, when building biological models based on
published experimental data, we may have to treat the data as highly
dependent-ordered sequences of statements (i.e., chains of collective
reasoning) rather than unordered and independent experimental observations.

Furthermore, our computations indicate that our data set can be
interpreted in two very different ways (two "alternative universes"):
one is an "optimists' universe" with a very low incidence of false
results (<5%), and another is a "pessimists' universe" with an
extraordinarily high rate of false results (>90%).

Our computations deem highly unlikely any milder intermediate
explanation between these two extremes. ~ [end excerpt]

No!! They couldn't possibly be saying that scientists are human and
can sometimes be subject to "crowd psychology"? And here comes this
fly in the ointment just when some were getting comfortable relying
on what they thought were safeguards against collective error (peer
review, etc.).

Newton's first law of motion is often stated as: An object at rest
tends to stay at rest and an object in motion tends to stay in motion
with the same speed and in the same direction unless acted upon by an
unbalanced force."

Applying that to social science, we could say that scientific
consensus tends to stay locked into immobility and when it comes up
for discussion, its trajectory remains uniform and linear unless and
until force is applied.

I interpret the squealing I hear from you as a reflection of even the
mere threat of force being applied. :)

~ Janice .... who knows that the analogy breaks down at the word,
"unbalanced", so don't attempt to use that subjective word (when it
comes to "social science") to justify your objections.

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Received on Thu Jun 15 10:41:08 2006