Talk:Peer review

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Editorial notes Article focuses mainly on creationism and not on other pseudosciences claiming to have been peer-reviewed/pseudojournals claiming to have peer review

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Logical error: the map is not the ground

Reading this, I notice a gap in RW, namely: there could stand to be a note somewhere about Mistaking the map for the territory, exemplified here by the loose use of the word "peer" (as in, "confusion, within creationist circles, about the meaning of 'peer...'")

I have been looking under Category:Logic, and have not yet found something that describes an argument that misuses a specialized term that also has a popular meaning, with just enough equivalence and difference between the two to create confusion.

No time to pursue this further just now... a little help? Sprocket J Cogswell 12:13, 12 June 2009 (UTC)

private conversations

Wikipedia or not, there should be some standard of quality by which these supposedly high quality articles are judged. Private conversations are not reliable references (and quoting private emails is not very nice either) Prometheus (talk) 19:54, 17 July 2010 (UTC)

I see nothing wrong with a known person saying "dude, I saw this happen and it's highly relevant here". If it was in a blog and linked in a reference it would be of no less informative value in the article.

So, can I make up anything I want and put it into the article? Prometheus (talk) 20:09, 17 July 2010 (UTC)

If you add something that you honestly think improves the article, then it's possible others will agree it improves the article (and it's possible they won't). If you make up something to add to an article just for the sake of being dickish, you're likely to be treated as if you're just being dickish. Is any of that ambiguous and in need of clarification? I mean, I'd have called it pretty obvious, but evidently it isn't - David Gerard (talk) 20:27, 17 July 2010 (UTC)

You've been carefully scouring links to RW users claiming "broken link" - please don't do this - David Gerard (talk) 20:04, 17 July 2010 (UTC)

Yeah, carefully, because I left it in where it made sense/where the article is a typically crappy RW article that's not worth salvaging. Prometheus (talk) 20:09, 17 July 2010 (UTC)

Yeah well, come here with an axe to grind and you'll find a stone. If you want to actually improve something, that's being helpful. If not, go away. ÑR_{/Señor Admin}^{/¡hablen ustedes!} 20:11, 17 July 2010 (UTC)

Oh sorry, I must've mistyped the url, I thought I was at RationalWiki, not Conservapedia. Shall I submit a writing plan to you? Prometheus (talk) 20:23, 17 July 2010 (UTC)

Yes please. You seem unable to behave yourself. ÑR_{/Señor Admin}^{/¡hablen ustedes!} 20:42, 17 July 2010 (UTC)

This isn't a 'pedia at all. ÑR_{/Señor Admin}^{/¡hablen ustedes!} 20:06, 17 July 2010 (UTC)

Fucksake, please don't just rant on and be dickish towards newer editors, please. The point is that we do need to maintain some quality, but there aren't any hard-and-fast standards that we stick to. There's nothing in stone about it, just a consensus - usually derived after the fact - about what does and what doesn't work. In a way, this is better than Wikipedia because that is often constricted by what it can use (see the butthurt over who founded RationalWiki, a "reliable" source said PalMD, but first hand accounts from people who actually were there said Trent) although we do have the weakness of having to hash through everything on a case-by-case basis. But in general, so long as people are honest about what they're sourcing - so people can verify it for themselves and decide whether to trust it - there aren't really any limits about what can be sourced for a statement or piece of evidence. ^bomination 20:42, 17 July 2010 (UTC)

I don't think User:AmesG is lying, I only think this is a weak source that should not be included in the article. A critic could say that the quotes are made up or that the letters have been quoted out of context, and you'd have nothing to counter that accusation. I mean what proof do we have beside the word of some guy on the internet?

You keep saying this is not an encyclopedia - but if that is so, why the articles at all? And if you want people to use this site as a reference, then there should be some basic level of reliability. Prometheus (talk) 20:54, 17 July 2010 (UTC)

It's not an encyclopaedia, but mostly in the sense that the article content isn't what you'd expect for an encyclopaedia; to try and rival Wikipedia would be totally pointless. The best way of describing them are as "collaborative essays" borne out of a combination of researched fact and personal experience and interpretation. So they can and do act as repositories for information that people might consider on-ntoable or irrelvant. ^bomination 21:43, 17 July 2010 (UTC)

"Thomas Kuhn, in the process of seeking to define the nature of science, and the nature of "scientific progress", writes in his work, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, that the unique composition of the scientific community, as composed of disinterested (read: unbiased) intellectual equals, is alone capable of generating scientific "progress."[1]:168 Therefore, Kuhn sees peer review as embodying "one of the strongest, if still unwritten, rules of scientific life... the prohibition of appeals to heads of state or to the populace at large in matters scientific."[1] Politics has no place in science, and the goal of peer review is to strip politics out of the equation." The above is the opposite of Kuhn's message, as we see by reading further on the same page 168. Ivor Catt ivorcatt@live.co.uk

Rejection by editors (citation needed?)

This is about the 6th bias case for peer-review which i added. "Good work can be rejected by journal on the basis that the researcher is not famous enough.[citation needed]". I don't think there is a need for a citation here. Here in chapter 1, page 2 is clearly stated that editors can reject a paper without a review. It stands to reason that whenever you have a process where you really on the personal opinion of one person you can be rejected for any number of reasons, proffesional or not. That's why i used the words 'can be rejected' and not 'are rejected' although probably i should have used 'may be rejected'. What do you think? --Micdhack (talk) 06:57, 3 February 2012 (UTC)

Hmm... The statement does need a citation, the question is whether the one you give there works. It does indeed say that a paper may not reach review, but it doesn't say whether the editor can simply reject the paper for any reason they like, at least so far as I have read. If, for example, the paper submitted was the work of the time cube guy, you would expect that the editor would be allowed to reject it and not waste her reviewers' time. But that doesn't mean that there are no rules as to what they can and cannot do in that vein. That is what we really need a reference to tell us - though I must admit I have only read the first page or so of chapter one there. Thoughts? Peter ^{Monomorium antarcticum} 07:20, 3 February 2012 (UTC)

I found another article that makes a more clear statement although still it is a "read between the lines" statement. Here on page 162, last paragraph, "The valuable contributions of a piece of research may be seriously threatened by a single act of human decision-making --namely, the judgment of a journal editor". This could mean to his/her selection of referees but it could also mean rejection of paper on the basis of anything(language, quality, personality, results etc.). I believe it is part of the shortcomings of the peer review process to give good faith to a single individual and not a collective.Maybe, we can revise the statement to a more neutral one such as the statement in the article and let the reader read between the lines. Micdhack (talk) 07:44, 3 February 2012 (UTC)

Considering that we don't know if any editors are allowed to reject papers on a whim, only that they can reject papers, we can't really back up the last sentence. Better would be: "The editors of many journals are able to reject papers before they reach the peer review process.<ref>[http://books.google.cz/books?hl=es&lr=&id=lH3DVnkbTFsC&oi=fnd&pg=PA1&dq=editor+reject+before+peer+review&ots=rqSA5mZQij&sig=Y7mZJoi67fsxWa6drQBUWaZa46M&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=editor%20reject%20before%20peer%20review&f=false Editorial peer review: its strengths and weaknesses]</ref><ref>[http://xa.yimg.com/kq/groups/1097087/908376224/name/mahoney.pdf Publication Prejudices: An Experimental Study of Confirmatory Bias in the Peer Review System]</ref> Depending on the rules in place surrounding their permitted reasoning for doing so, this could potentially lead to the unjustified dismissal of good science."

Or something like that. Peter ^{Monomorium antarcticum} 08:05, 3 February 2012 (UTC)

Agreed. I like your sentence better and it accounts for other cases such as rejecting groundbreaking research which is also in this two references as far as i can remember. I will make the change. Btw, based on experience journals do keep a record of all communications between editors and authors but still when you have a single person judging something it can be problematic. Micdhack (talk) 08:13, 3 February 2012 (UTC)

And now we wait to see if ADK, who put the tag there, has problems with it... Peter ^{Monomorium antarcticum} 08:20, 3 February 2012 (UTC)

Most of those points need citations, to be honest. So long as there is some indication that it's not just "in my experience", that's fine. ^theist 08:42, 3 February 2012 (UTC)

Guide

Peer reviewed papers take training to read understand, partly because they have a bit of jargon in them. I think we should have a page on how to read a peer reviewed paper. I think we should have make a guide on how to read a peer reviewed paper, perhaps with minimum snark so those that aren't in our political target demographic won't be reluctant to read it if they some how come across it. We can start by plagiarizing http://wp.me/p3pAiO-ab and modify that. Alternatively If you think that is sufficient for those outside our political demographic, we can make an article for us, with the snark (or we can make both). Either way maybe we should credit the basis for our article if we choose to start by copying someone else's guide. Obviously the Peer Review page should link to the guide. -- Corpse in the bed (talk) 09:04, 3 June 2014 (UTC)

A guide to reading a proper reviewed paper is more commonly known as "a graduate degree in that subject area". That post in external links would be a good start, though. ^{Don't click here} 09:54, 3 June 2014 (UTC)

The picture/flowchart at the beginning of the article

After the comment step, is it still the same paper or a different paper already? Perhaps the picture need to be clarified. [[User:K61824|]][[User_talk:K61824|]] 22:44, 6 June 2014 (UTC)