This is desperately needed, esp for social and now biological sciences. As a more senior scientist, it is beyond disturbing to me to see the review process hijacked by ideology. The consequences, as you say, are serious indeed. So THANK YOU for relentlessly fighting the battle. Separately, I wonder whether AI might help— could it not be trained to ‘rate’ papers based on say, methodology? (I’m thinking of so many poor gender medicine papers brandished as support for GAC). Just a thought.
I've long believed that *nothing* gets better on its own; we have to improve it. What you have proposed sounds like a step in that direction. Good luck.
Academia is utterly captured and corrupt, therefore the racist, -phobic, omniprattle shall commence momentarily. Prepare for the purple haired screaming!🙀
Bur what makes a to-some-degree biased opinion different from a fact claim is evidence, in the form of data & transparency about methods.
Papers often get referenced by people — say, the Dhejne study — without actually understanding the data, the outcomes, the caveats, the considerations, the errors, the oversights, and the omissions.
This allows Dhejne to continue to claim that the study didn’t show male pattern violence among trans identifying males — simply because that calculation wasn’t laid bare in the study.
If someone else wants to create a site that rebuts that rebuttal, or articulates an alternative interpretation that the evidence supports, then the bias of the individuals is irrelevant.
Heck, these folks might even allow respectful, rational, evidence-driven debate to occur on their own site 🙀
Anonymity won't prevent editorial bias, because the content of the review will either be favoured or disfavoured by the editors regardless of the identity of the contributor. It is up to the editors to demonstrate that they are sticking to their principles. However, anonymity may protect reviewers from harassment.
Good questions because I also have problem with "Is this critique coherent, serious, reasonable, or even popular enough to deserve scholarly attention?" aka how this would solve "biased" problem in any way, because decision is still in some human hands even though Colin Wright showed some kind of analytics expertes. Not sure what the problem with Digital Canary :).
I love this short format video with a companion transcript! It's a nice addition to full on articles and fits nicely into smaller time-slots when I am overwhelmed with many emails screaming for attention.
I just read a piece of correspondence in The Lancet on fabricated citations. I'm not sure what is worse: citations of fabricated references, citations of purposely placed junk, or citations of papers the authors think are legitimate but are actually junk.
Hmmm, it would seem that the self-correcting features of science are indeed present at all times, thanks to, among other things, obsessions like yours, which seek to correct the evidently vast sea of nonsense that passes for legit science.
Assuming the journals you cite are important, weighty affairs, and not the fanciful garbage that is always found on the fringe -- you know, way way out there in the hinterlands of academia, science, and good sense, and therefore routinely weeded out from mainstream consideration -- good job!
Way to go. You are yet another in a boundless tradition of "correctors." You are, in fact, a political corrector. Of the reactionary sort. Excellent. It’s very possible that your services are indeed needed.
Then again, for a member of what is a radical anti-political correctness movement, your apoplexy does rather raise more questions than it answers.
To digest your activism, one would have to think that science today is a vast endeavor of corrupt fantasists, its protagonists collectively engaged in and dominating a minority of the serious gate keepers. That American scientific journals are swimming in the sewage of complete BS, and that we need a call to arms to end this slippery slope of scientific meltdown. Perhaps we should return to the scientific equivalent of more rigorous eras; whatever would be the scientific vetting equivalent of Trump’s 19th Century 120% tariffs and gunboat diplomacy.
Is it possible the peril you decry is overblown? Is it not far more likely that you are actually a member of that fringe -- of its reactionary element -- of a self-appointed guppy gestapo on a reef of junky science (or is it just fanciful academia?), lamenting the presence of colorful nonsense you find so worthy of your time. All the serious members of scientific fields that I’ve ever known seem to have better things to do than hyperventilate over fanciful nonsense.
I would not say that science is not self correcting. I would say that science is self correcting, it is just not always rapidly self correcting. More correctly, the scientific community is not always rapid in its correction of scientific mistakes or adoption of new science. There are famous historical stories like the tectonic plates story, the periodic table, heliocentric solar system, etc. Ultimately, the self correction is based on the evidence and looking at the evidence. To rely on an absence of evidence or ignore the evidence is by definition not science. There have been cases where the scientific community engaged in human social dynamics or politics in ways that suppressed evidence and things like that. Such phenomena has been part of the the story for gender and sex transition related publications, but that is not science, that is literally not science. It is humans engaging in non-scientific behavior.
"More correctly, the scientific community is not always rapid in its correction of scientific mistakes or adoption of new science" - hm, but problem is cowardice, so it is not about speed aka are there a human to peer review but it seems is about that you can scare "science" human to not do "science".
That is one of the problems. It is not always cowardice, it is sometimes just rejection of new theories or evidence for other reasons. However, correction of information still happens in the longterm, with science.
Not really, it seems that corrections works only for simple problem, but for those which have ideologies attached, no and as examples we still have feminism, climate change bs and i could go on and literally not a single of signs in sight that it will change just on still doing "science".
Your point is that "science" eventually will self-correct, but if "self not correction" is because of fear aka ideological pressure, that means self correction will not happen and my example of this is feminism, climate bs and this will not change because suddenly science people spotted mistakes, but it will have to be something like what Trump did to trans or health bs.
I don't know if i should bother to respond to what you said or just direct you back to my first comment. If you are making some statements that don't substantially differ in "prevention from corrrection" relative to the historical examples I provided, and even worse you keep insisting, then it is unpleasant. You should distinguish statements of fact from your own speculation. Also, maybe you should read what the actual definition of science is, which i already referred to without providing. I made a comment, i did not make an educational essay. You can look up the things I referred to if you want to learn.
It is disappointing that you have made this comment like this, here. It looks like you could have made some constructive contribution, and it would have been nice if you did so. What you added here was unfortunately a high percentage of not constructive, and also the amount that was constructive was not provided in a very constructive manner.
This is desperately needed, esp for social and now biological sciences. As a more senior scientist, it is beyond disturbing to me to see the review process hijacked by ideology. The consequences, as you say, are serious indeed. So THANK YOU for relentlessly fighting the battle. Separately, I wonder whether AI might help— could it not be trained to ‘rate’ papers based on say, methodology? (I’m thinking of so many poor gender medicine papers brandished as support for GAC). Just a thought.
The mainstream large language models are trained on gender ideology. They are far from neutral.
What could also help would be to disclose what methodologies AI has used in delivering responses to inquiries,
Excellent approach, Excellent!
I've long believed that *nothing* gets better on its own; we have to improve it. What you have proposed sounds like a step in that direction. Good luck.
Academia is utterly captured and corrupt, therefore the racist, -phobic, omniprattle shall commence momentarily. Prepare for the purple haired screaming!🙀
So grateful for all of your work, and your courage! Keep going, Colin!
What a brilliant idea! Bravo!
Good luck.
Will the submissions be anonymised? Otherwise, how will you "save science" from your own biases?
By demanding *evidence*, ruthlessly.
That’s how scientists have done it in the past (Galileo through pre-Sokal times, anyway).
And how does this address the editors' biases, exactly? Or are you asserting they have none?
Come now, Paula, we all have biases.
Bur what makes a to-some-degree biased opinion different from a fact claim is evidence, in the form of data & transparency about methods.
Papers often get referenced by people — say, the Dhejne study — without actually understanding the data, the outcomes, the caveats, the considerations, the errors, the oversights, and the omissions.
This allows Dhejne to continue to claim that the study didn’t show male pattern violence among trans identifying males — simply because that calculation wasn’t laid bare in the study.
But it is what the data says.
So let’s say that this new venture promotes the rebuttal from MBM: https://murrayblackburnmackenzie.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/mbm-briefing-on-dhjene-et-al.-april-2021-1.pdf
If someone else wants to create a site that rebuts that rebuttal, or articulates an alternative interpretation that the evidence supports, then the bias of the individuals is irrelevant.
Heck, these folks might even allow respectful, rational, evidence-driven debate to occur on their own site 🙀
I don't know who you are, nor am I asking you.
Do you know how this site works?
Or social media generally?
I agree that there should be more anonymization in the peer review process.
It's all talk unless thix happens
Anonymity won't prevent editorial bias, because the content of the review will either be favoured or disfavoured by the editors regardless of the identity of the contributor. It is up to the editors to demonstrate that they are sticking to their principles. However, anonymity may protect reviewers from harassment.
Good questions because I also have problem with "Is this critique coherent, serious, reasonable, or even popular enough to deserve scholarly attention?" aka how this would solve "biased" problem in any way, because decision is still in some human hands even though Colin Wright showed some kind of analytics expertes. Not sure what the problem with Digital Canary :).
Wow I hope Vinay Prasad knows about "Peer Review." He has done some pretty eloquent takedowns of COVID papers on his Substack.
Excellent!
Love, Indio
Too bad your article in WSJ is behind a paywall.
I love this short format video with a companion transcript! It's a nice addition to full on articles and fits nicely into smaller time-slots when I am overwhelmed with many emails screaming for attention.
I just read a piece of correspondence in The Lancet on fabricated citations. I'm not sure what is worse: citations of fabricated references, citations of purposely placed junk, or citations of papers the authors think are legitimate but are actually junk.
Hmmm, it would seem that the self-correcting features of science are indeed present at all times, thanks to, among other things, obsessions like yours, which seek to correct the evidently vast sea of nonsense that passes for legit science.
Assuming the journals you cite are important, weighty affairs, and not the fanciful garbage that is always found on the fringe -- you know, way way out there in the hinterlands of academia, science, and good sense, and therefore routinely weeded out from mainstream consideration -- good job!
Way to go. You are yet another in a boundless tradition of "correctors." You are, in fact, a political corrector. Of the reactionary sort. Excellent. It’s very possible that your services are indeed needed.
Then again, for a member of what is a radical anti-political correctness movement, your apoplexy does rather raise more questions than it answers.
To digest your activism, one would have to think that science today is a vast endeavor of corrupt fantasists, its protagonists collectively engaged in and dominating a minority of the serious gate keepers. That American scientific journals are swimming in the sewage of complete BS, and that we need a call to arms to end this slippery slope of scientific meltdown. Perhaps we should return to the scientific equivalent of more rigorous eras; whatever would be the scientific vetting equivalent of Trump’s 19th Century 120% tariffs and gunboat diplomacy.
Is it possible the peril you decry is overblown? Is it not far more likely that you are actually a member of that fringe -- of its reactionary element -- of a self-appointed guppy gestapo on a reef of junky science (or is it just fanciful academia?), lamenting the presence of colorful nonsense you find so worthy of your time. All the serious members of scientific fields that I’ve ever known seem to have better things to do than hyperventilate over fanciful nonsense.
I would not say that science is not self correcting. I would say that science is self correcting, it is just not always rapidly self correcting. More correctly, the scientific community is not always rapid in its correction of scientific mistakes or adoption of new science. There are famous historical stories like the tectonic plates story, the periodic table, heliocentric solar system, etc. Ultimately, the self correction is based on the evidence and looking at the evidence. To rely on an absence of evidence or ignore the evidence is by definition not science. There have been cases where the scientific community engaged in human social dynamics or politics in ways that suppressed evidence and things like that. Such phenomena has been part of the the story for gender and sex transition related publications, but that is not science, that is literally not science. It is humans engaging in non-scientific behavior.
"More correctly, the scientific community is not always rapid in its correction of scientific mistakes or adoption of new science" - hm, but problem is cowardice, so it is not about speed aka are there a human to peer review but it seems is about that you can scare "science" human to not do "science".
That is one of the problems. It is not always cowardice, it is sometimes just rejection of new theories or evidence for other reasons. However, correction of information still happens in the longterm, with science.
Not really, it seems that corrections works only for simple problem, but for those which have ideologies attached, no and as examples we still have feminism, climate change bs and i could go on and literally not a single of signs in sight that it will change just on still doing "science".
It seems like you have not read or have forgotten what I wrote in my first comment and perhaps are not familiar with the historical examples I gave.
Your point is that "science" eventually will self-correct, but if "self not correction" is because of fear aka ideological pressure, that means self correction will not happen and my example of this is feminism, climate bs and this will not change because suddenly science people spotted mistakes, but it will have to be something like what Trump did to trans or health bs.
I don't know if i should bother to respond to what you said or just direct you back to my first comment. If you are making some statements that don't substantially differ in "prevention from corrrection" relative to the historical examples I provided, and even worse you keep insisting, then it is unpleasant. You should distinguish statements of fact from your own speculation. Also, maybe you should read what the actual definition of science is, which i already referred to without providing. I made a comment, i did not make an educational essay. You can look up the things I referred to if you want to learn.
It is disappointing that you have made this comment like this, here. It looks like you could have made some constructive contribution, and it would have been nice if you did so. What you added here was unfortunately a high percentage of not constructive, and also the amount that was constructive was not provided in a very constructive manner.
I can't see the comment but I loved the response!