The Problem With Peer Review - Eric Weinstein | The Portal Podcast Clips
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- Опубликовано: 22 авг 2024
- "Peer review is a cancer from outer space. It came from the biomedical community. It invaded science." - Eric Weinstein
In this portal podcast clip, Eric Weinstein discusses the issue of peer review with Bret Weinstein.
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"Peer-review is not peer-review. It sounds like peer-review. It is peer-injunction. It is the ability for your peers to keep the world from learning about your work."
"There are reasons that great work cannot be peer-reviewed. Furthermore, you have entire fields that are existing now with electronic archives that are not peer-reviewed."
#ericweinstein #peerreview #theportalpodcast
Great stuff Eric!
Eric, small point. you need to let people finish their points. You interrupt too much.
He's understandably angry at his brother for capitulating to that wicked woman!
Specifically in this episode it was warranted to get Bret to actually tell his story. Listen to the preamble to the full episode and you'll hear Eric explain as such
@@TooToo246 😂😂😂😂 *Capitulate*
@@mwanikimwaniki6801 what, wrong word? 😅
@@TooToo246 😂😂Nooooo... I just feel like it is grand. Like what a leader would say about a nation trying to annex them... "We will never capitulate!!!!"😀😂😂
I think what may be overlooked here is that science is still something done by human beings in human organisations.
As in _any_ organisation, politics, power play and simple (conscious and unconscious) bias _will_ play a role no matter what.
Well said ✅
They’re aware of that. The issue is that - if sunlight is the best disinfectant - peer review keeps your paper from getting any sun.
It’s better for a paper to be published and judged after the fact. And like they mentioned, a good editor can act as a curator as well.
Eric is so close to putting his bro in a headlock
That would have been entertaining.
Honestly as an accomplished mathematician he sees the toxicity that’s spread and prevented his brother from being recognized for his own brilliance due to fucking emotional academics that abuse their graduate students by paying them nothing and getting raises from their contributions. The scientific community is supposed to work together to discover and achieve. Look at what were able to accomplish in the era of Jon von Neumann and Turing. Media plays a role in hilighting so and so accomplishment and making celebrities out of the most accomplished. That’s not science, but dogmatic elitism
Is he twin brother of Bret Weinstein?!
@E Aboudara thanks
Brothers interacting - priceless.
Eric's hair is in line for a Nobel Prize.
Wein Fro.
Scientist here. Peer reviewer is flawed. But without it, the quality of science would go wayyyyy down.
Exactly, peer review has issues, but without a better alternative, and I don't see one coming soon, it's the best we got! You can always make your work available online, but without other experts going through it, it's basically a blog post.
Definitely agree with the necessity of peer review. I believe Eric is pointing out the flaw that peer review is inherently resistant to things that challenge the edifice of the consensus and can therefore serve as a function of idea suppression (or the DISH as Eric frequently discusses).
Respect that. Bret pointed out an obvious sign of excessive gatekeeping / rejecting papers, namely *the necessity (excuse) of conserving paper (in an age when most everything is accessed electronically.)*
That's a different argument than selecting for high average quality, and in any case I believe many ridiculous "Social justice" style papers have been famously taken seriously (not a defining phenomenon of course but it's still interesting")
@@purplemonkeydishwasher9818 There is no external audit, but there are ways for peer review to self-regulate. In my field at least, there are usually 3 reviewers who give the initial reviews, then there are answers (rebuttals) by the authors, then the reviewers have a chance to change their minds and reach an agreement, and finally the area chair, a usually more senior researcher, makes the final call. Glaringly wrong reviews can be called out in any of these stages.
Even if the wrong decision is made all the way through, and this can go both ways, good papers that are rejected and bad papers that are accepted, it can be fixed at a later stage. Errors in papers can be noticed after publication, or good papers that were initially rejected can be published in another conference/journal or simply posted online for the rest of the community to see the work. All this reflects back to the initial reviewers.
In general I'd say that mistakes during the review process in the vast majority of cases are made in good faith, because the reviewers did not spot the errors, or underestimated the importance of the work etc.
There's no proof of that.
The few studies done on peer review show a negligible effect at best. So much 'bad science' makes it through peer review, that as a guarantor for the 'truth' of a publication, it's literally no better than a coin toss.
So while it's not completely useless on its own, considering the 'prestige' and assumption of quality that come with a peer-review stamp of approval, it probably has a negative effect on science overall.
I was peer reviewed in middle school. It did not go well.
Hopefully grownup scientists should have better judgment and objectivity than a kid in middle school... but some feuds really make you wonder sometimes...
:(
"I don't care about my nobel prize. All I care about is finding out." - Richard Feynman.
Stop interrupting, Eric!
Lol, it reveals their brotherly dynamics
@@umpteenexpression530 haha totes
Sibling rivarly
classic longnose tactic
@@user-fg8ux8zo6w yeah, that's why they're both behaving the same way and people are annoyed with them both. Fuck off, bigot.
Look, everyone. The Weinstein brothers don’t want to shield work from peer review. They want peer review to be a publicly accountable process. There’s a ton of questionable gatekeeping that goes on when a reviewer doesn’t have to put their name on their review. I hear the Weinsteins saying that editors of journals should have control, and the bar for publication should be a little lower than it currently is. Journal editors can make reasonable decisions about what is “worthy of being publicized” and THEN the peers will review it out in the open. Double blind peer review enables a lot of shady stuff to happen before the work is even granted a wide audience.
But non-anonymous peer-review would have the problem that the reviewers might not dare publicly critique papers. Only established scientists would dare to critique papers with their own name and thus end up as the gatekeepers. (And in the example in this video, the reviewer's identity was actually known so anonymity wasn't the problem anyway.)
They are going over an anecdote here not showing us that there is a systemic problem with peer review, not to mention he mentions that they knew the review was crap on his paper, however there is the other option that they didn’t read the review, incompetence is a far more logical explanation than some grand conspiracy (Occam’s razor folks). Next, they say peer review is a relatively new thing...........it was introduced in 1731, I hardly believe that is new. Finally, I can’t stand listening to these IDW guys like the Weinsteins. First off, we are listening to an Biology prof and his venture capitalist brother, who I’m pretty damn sure doesn’t know nearly as much as he seems to think about the review and publishing practice of scientific papers, bitch about how Bret was put in a shit situation regarding the publishing of one of his papers but they don’t provide another example, any statistics to back up why peer review is so bad. Just a single anecdote and then a bunch of suppositions and assumptions about why stuff happened, again with no evidence. Both of these guys shouldn’t be taken seriously when they tackle a discussion from this much of an intellectually dishonest position.
@@ericfranklin1802 "incompetence is a far more logical explanation than some grand conspiracy"
I agree with most of what you wrote but I would note that they didn't seem to claim any kind of grand conspiracy but rather a petty personal feud distorting review.
Eric Franklin the venture capitalist is a physicist.
"the bar should be lower" there are already way too many shitty student papers making into garbage journals and cluttering the discourse that can't even be reproduced
I can understand where they're coming from, but what's the alternative?
Ultimately all systems depend on people and their judgement.
Their ultimate critique is that some people (reviewers) are stupid, but what's their alternative? That editors take over the role? What prevents the editors from being morons?
That we not review? How can you possibly work if there's no-one to at least filter out some of noise?
That we base it on the Journal's reputation? We already do that.
At best we can instill some scepticism on the whole process and have people recognise it's not some magical standard, but ultimately whatever flaws are in the peer review process, I dare you to come up with a better system.
They said what the best alternative was in their opinion. Late the editors review it, publish, then that's when it gets peer reviewed. So basically the science does't get stashed away somewhere, but it can still be scrutinized post publication.
@@aaronjackson2720
Yeah, I know what they said, but fundamentally, I fail to see how it really solves the core problem
@@Xalgucennia Do you have better idea?
@@britasha1194
Well no, but that's the point, it's an intractable problem that'll remain endemic because it's fundamentally unsolvable.
I mean, other than just saying be better, what is anyone really proposing here?
The problem ultimately boils down to some people are are stupid, and you'll disagree with them. Every government, every business, every organisation, every community has this problem, never mind science.
You can try to mitigate this somewhat through checks and balances, a healthy scepticism, but really this isn't anything more than general advice. Nothing short of fundamentally altering human nature will really solve this problem in any substantive way.
@@Xalgucennia Yeah, shame, I wish we had something better.
I don’t think this was a very compelling argument against peer review. It’s just one guy airing a grievance without the other person even there to tell their side of the story ...
Mr. H No, I was totally unaware this is only a clip until you pointed it out to me. Your invaluable insights have completely reordered my perceptions of this dialogue. Thank you for your nuanced and essential analysis. The world is a better place thanks to your critical brand of intelligent commentary... #respect
no science needs "peer review". It only takes a single person with one good correct idea, with no supporters, to be right and for everyone else to be wrong.
If a published paper is wrong, or you believe it to be wrong, test it yourself and see if it holds up. If it holds up, write your own paper saying so. If it doesn't hold up, write your own paper saying so. But do not deny a person their paper because it lacks "peer review".
Peer review really means truth by consensus.
Peer review doesn't care about consensus. They care about the quality of the data and the experimental design. The conclusions are not reviewed.
@@BitcoinIsGoingToZero That is what it supposed to be. James is mocking peer review "in practice" at present, like Eric and Bret do in the video.
That's very postmodernist in an ironic way.
Yeah, it's more about describing how consensus emerges through peers review, not so much a prescription and hard-parameterization. Like Eric mentions, some experiments and conclusions are beyond what most contemporaries know, so it'd be counter-useful to have them be the determinants of the veracity of the claims. Eventually they have to learn or refute the claims, but you don't necessarily prescribe "peer review" before allowing a claim. Basically, freedom of speech, and externalize/open-source consensus.
@@BitcoinIsGoingToZero That's factually wrong. The academic hoax by James Lindsay and company have shown us that the "review" process is absolutely corrupt and politicized.
I became acquainted with the peer review process in 1972 when I published my first paper in the journal Brain Research. I had some minor problems getting it published, but it was finally published and I got a lot of reprint requests. The lesson I learned was that you sometimes have to argue with the journal editors to get your work published. I later became an assistant editor of a journal and made the mistake of sending perfectly good work to a very nasty, envious, and embittered (albeit highly intelligent and productive) reviewer. The reviewer made mincemeat out of the submission. I felt awful for the author of the paper, but felt that there was nothing I could do. I believe in the peer review process, but it certainly has its weaknesses. I was glad to eventually get out of academics (too much envy, competition, narcissism, and outright corruption). Every field has its problems, but academics is vicious.
Joan Blond Sorry, but what field did you move into when leaving academia? I recognize the character you portray of it, but business isn’t any different. Because the underlying factor driving it is that it is filled with humans and all their flaws.
@@milton7763 You are absolutely right. Business is no different. I tried running a restaurant which lost money and was nothing but a good tax shelter. I finally made it as a public school teacher. I think I was a moderately decent teacher, although classroom management wasn't easy for me. I very much liked the other teachers because I didn't experience the vanity, nastiness, and competitiveness that I found in other professions. I'm retired now and and am deeply grateful for my many blessings. I'm spending my retirement working out, taking classes, and enjoying my family and friends.
In many branches of engineering, I encountered massive corruption.
I worked hard as a whistle blower and was paid nothing for the hardest work I did. .
@@milton7763 you're also correct and that's exactly why people shouldn't be so quick to just buy something because it was "peer reviewed" - or not question anything because the opposing position has more peer reviewed material supporting it. Many of the most major advancements of science have been made by people who were ostracized or trashed by the majority of their peers until they couldn't possibly defend their positions anymore.
When I read something like this it makes me think what am I to believe is TRUE!!
'don't bother this is a podcast' lol
I have had to put up with peer review for over 120 papers (all published). It can be infuriating. But as awful as it can be, there is no better system in the offing.
Weistein's take on the process strongly suggests he has not had much actual experience with the process.
At times I struggle to distinguish the concept of peer review from group think. Even scientists are human and incline to run with the herd even when shouting loudly that they aren't.
Peer review in itself is a good thing preventing bullshit to go through, the problems you raise is more about how it's done
...and yet there's scientific bullshit everywhere, in every field
Getting a little tiresome hearing Eric’s sour grapes about not making it in academia. His ego is making him look bad. Let it go. The whole “Nobody understands my genius” shtick is getting old and it’s never a good look for someone who fancies themselves an intellectual.
I enjoy Eric’s thoughts on a variety of topics, but his resentment is becoming a real distraction.
Exactly! Smart people dont need to go around talking about how smart they are.
Yeah, how many papers have these guys written and submitted and how many papers have they themselves actually reviewed? All academics have their story about awful reviews, but you push on and submit elsewhere. If these guys reviewed papers more, I think they would think very differently about the process, because many papers need a lot of reworking and revision before publication. There are so many journals and places for submission that I don't think anyone is being 'censored'. I mean, sure, I'd love to be invited to give a talk at Oxford and have it publicized in the news, but if they don't invite me does that mean that my new ideas are being squelched?
Huh?
The point is for anyone doing research that good ideas do get squelched, and for all the wrong reasons, and peer review can enable this. The overwhelming majority of the great pioneering scientists shared the opinion that it is too hard to get novel ideas out and the wider science community is overly conservative. Science would progress much faster if there were less mechanisms for shutting down new ideas, especially from younger scientists.
@@nznick9033 The problem that you mention is not from the peer review process but from the way academia has become corporatized.
@@anonymoususer6037 I think that's part of the problem, but I doubt it's the whole problem because the rejection of valid useful new ideas goes back much further than the recent era. Politics, career progression, greed and pride have led to new ideas being stifled but Einstein (and many others) argued that new ideas are often resisted out of sheer closed mindedness. His view was that not enough science history or philosophy is taught to scientists, so that many scientists greatly overestimate the certainty of the models they use and thus resist new ideas.
Either way, the less mechanisms there are for politics or the 'old guard' of a field to get involved shutting down new ideas the better science will progress.
@@nznick9033 From my perspective, there are all sorts of ways to get your unpublished paper out there nowadays. My field and many others have a repository of current working papers from scholars all over the world that's searchable and that most people keep up with. No censorship there. In my field, the editors of a rather prominent journal got into a dispute with the publisher of the journal over free access, resulting in the entire editorial team and the editorial board resigning and creating an on-line open access journal that retains the respectability of the journal they left (and the one they left has seen a diminishment in the quality of papers),
Now, I get it that there are social forces, biases, etc. that exist, but since it's a human enterprise, I don't see how that will ever go away.
I don't think you realize that for that one anti-establishment idea that turns out to be right, there are hundreds or more that are way out there and just plain wrong. Theres a lot of mediocre to truly horrible stuff out there. It's too easy to say that the latter are just being shut down because of the old guard. And I don't think that just because something is published that it is of high quality. It's a human process.
Why do i have the feeling that when they were kids and Bret had the bigger ice cream cone all hell broke loose in the backseat of dad's Oldsmobile..?
Because he's a big brother, and that's what big brothers do. They want to be bossy.
Because he’s an ego monster who thinks he deserves the world cuz he’s smart
bbq seitan who are you?
Derek Zhang just an observer
Are you a fanboy?
@@bbqseitan7106 Calm your nuts, holy shit. No one is looking for a fight except you.
There are legitimate criticisms to be made about peer review (e.g., publication bias, the publish-or-perish incentive, lack of blinding in the review process, etc.), but this sort of rhetoric ("peer review is a cancer") is profoundly unhelpful and plays right into the anti-science / pseudoscience handbook.
I didn't find this super helpful i must say. They didnt really go much beyond further declarations to explain what they meant. Do you know and could you expound on what they mean by 'real peer review' vs the bs peer review? What does the 'real process' look like? Is it just a difference in quality of the review?
@@presidentresident The idea was that it is what happens after the paper has been published, when all your peers get to read and comment. Contrasted with 'peer injunction', I think the phrase was.
This was a through and through poorly argued case, and publishing it would, I imagine, be receiving zero credence from any reasonable scientifically oriented peers (pun intended). There's no data, there's not even a clarification of the argument. That's not to say that they are incorrect, just that hyperbolic language anecdotes and low-blow insults are 'very low level critique', and non-arguments.
Two guys who intimately know the terrain and how the game is played calling out the gatekeeper censorship swamp that has infested the hallowed halls medical community for a century already. If ever there was a case for cloning, we could use a million more like them.
Gatekeeper censorship? Yep, I think you hit the nail on the head with naming this thing.
You’ve just pointed out why peer review works. A valid critique raises valid points. A stupid unjustified peer review can be ignored. Either way the right paper gets published. What’s the alternative, just accept any old paper because it kinda looks right?
@God Howard Anyone who tries to shove asses through heads in a debate is probably not a very good scientist. Open mindedness requires a certain amount of humility.
If you don’t like something that someone you disagree with says about literally anything, then stop complaining.
Just because you believe something doesn’t make it a fact. You don’t have facts. You have opinions. Facts are something that other people have, not something that you have. You aren’t the center of the universe and nothing you say needs to be believed simply because you say so. You aren’t an authority on knowledge. Talk less, listen more. Show some humility. Be a better person. Get over yourself. Tough shit.
@@nznick9033 No, humility is entirely optional. I don't care if my doctor insults me if he can get my tumour out of my eustachian tubes. Shoving asses or not comes down to who has accurate facts. People who think disinfectant is useless against the coronavirus because it's "JuSt A FeVeR" will get their ass bulldozed even by a moderatly informed high school student.
@@BygoneT You know a lot of theories don't get enough facts to really confirm them till decades after they are proposed, sometimes 100 years or more. I mean we are still in the process of confirming some predictions of relativity. Most pioneering scientists were much more about suggesting unproven but fadcinating possibilites and had no interest in bulldozing anyone. Humility has a huge role in determining how well anyone can contribute or diminish the progress in a specific field of science.
no science needs "peer review". It only takes a single person with one good correct idea, with no supporters, to be right and for everyone else to be wrong.
If a published paper is wrong, or you believe it to be wrong, test it yourself and see if it holds up. If it holds up, write your own paper saying so. If it doesn't hold up, write your own paper saying so. But do not deny a person their paper because it lacks "peer review".
The fact that peer review is a relatively recent innovation in scholarly publication is irrelevant and in no way a criticism of it. There have been a number of "much more recent" innovations that scholars in different disciplines nearly unanimously applaud, such as the strong push in computer science for authors to make all their data and algorithms available so others can independently test the paper's claims. Even the case presented in this podcast as an argument against peer review (with an implied adversary giving a long list of misguided criticisms) was handled perfectly. A single short email by the original author was answered within an hour and led to publication; the author has only himself to blame for his delay in contacting the journal. I have experienced similar cases myself and save for one case, been fully satisfied with the journals' responses. The discussants do not address the far more prevalent flaws that arise WITHOUT peer review. (I have extensive experience, and perhaps 20 peer-reviewed papers and literally hundreds of scholarly presentations rebutting a widely promoted non-peer-reviewed claim/thesis that should never have seen the light of day.) We simply cannot leave decisions up to a single editor, who can never be expert on the full range of topics in the journal. (Further, editors can take sides in scholarly debates. I have first-hand knowledge of how a journal editor sped publication of his/her own submissions compared to that of rivals... an injustice that was exposed in part because of a vigorous peer-review system.) The claim that there are some fields in which currently progress without peer review shows only that this (might) work (temporarily) in NEW and VERY SMALL fields. I agree that in some cases it is beneficial to have someone other than the original authors "take responsibility" for a publication. I strongly favor the approach of The Proceedings of the National Academy and a few other journals in which each paper is "Communicated by..." to show another scholar who places his or her reputation on the line.
Seems like you’re saying editors cant be expected to have expertise on every subject, but that in Brets case the editors expertise solved the problem?
So what if the editor didn’t have expertise in Brets field?
The only people who dont want the *complete* open critique of any and all scientific works are technocratic authoritarians. Either you believe humans are to be treated as free and responsible agents, or toddlers to be coddled and prodded.
@@liamrmorgans921 The editor should-and in most cases MUST-send any submission out to bona fide EXPERTS.
no science needs "peer review". It only takes a single person with one good correct idea, with no supporters, to be right and for everyone else to be wrong.
If a published paper is wrong, or you believe it to be wrong, test it yourself and see if it holds up. If it holds up, write your own paper saying so. If it doesn't hold up, write your own paper saying so. But do not deny a person their paper because it lacks "peer review".
@@SoloRenegade It is impossible for me (or indeed anyone) to "test it myself and see if it holds up" in the vast majority of cases. Impossible. And the missive "...you BELIEVE it to be wrong" is insane. If I work in field X, but want to rely on a result from field Y (where I am not an expert), there's no way I can fully judge it. Impossible. Then there is the overall effort it would take to judge such papers. I rely daily upon mathematical theorems I haven't the time (and in many cases the expertise) to "test myself." Expert peer review is a vital and essential step for speeding science, engineering, and math. While one can cherry pick a few extreme cases (and even Weinstein fails to do this), it is so FAR FAR superior to any alternative.
I understand the critique of peer review, but the alternative Eric is describing of basically having a single editor being the all-knowing gate keeper of what is quality and worthy of publication sounds like it has some massive weaknesses as well.
I do love his final statement that real peer review happens after publication (paraphrasing here). But as a journal only has so much space you need some kind of filtering mechanism to decide what gets published and what doesn’t
no gatekeeper. The plurality is reintroduced by having way more journals/editors than we have today. So either we have a small oligopoly of scientific journals that everyone is peer reviewing for, or we have 100x more journals that are much more independent and openly in defiance with each other. So the gate keeping you fear we actually already have today, concentrated in a handful of journals.
@@georgemargaris Right, because what we really need is 100x more journals to buy subscriptions for in whatever field we happen to study.
Improving the accountability of current journals is probably a better solution, imo. There's a lot that can be done, but instead of dozens more journals, how about a couple per field dedicated to reproducing studies published elsewhere? What about understanding that politics will be a factor no matter what system we establish and that consensus of professionals in a field does matter (more and more, the less you know), and telling media outlets to fuck off with their fawning over every new line of research before it's had time for thorough investigation?
@@joelhenderson3723 , now that they have the market monopolized they can get away with outrageous subscription fees. This would obviously not be possible in a free market with strong competition. What's the problem with having more choice? I am just pointing out, in your first comment you have righteously called out the gate keepers, but in your second comment you defend them?
hamster in the machine The main three problems I see with the approach you are suggesting are these:
1) Your approach doesn’t necessarily change the mechanism of selection: Eric is talking about peer review vs an autonomous editor making the selection. More journals still means you have to make a choice about who decides what goes into the journals
2) No-one has the time to read all these articles. There are actually not a handful of publications but dozens if not hundreds already. As people don’t have enough time to read it all, you naturally see some publications floating to the surface as the ‘top’, ‘preferred’ or most highly esteemed publications (e.g. Nature, Science). In a sense, that is something that happens as a consensus.
There is no-one stopping you from publishing a new journal if you want. But you have to convince scientists to publish in it. They will want to give their research the biggest possible audience so most scientists will aim for the most widely read journals. Which means these have first pick and select the ones they think will make most impact and that further strengthens their position as the most esteemed journals.
3) Although the approach you are suggesting leaves the choice more firmly with readers (more journals means more published papers and the reader gets to decide what journals and what papers to read) it can very well lead to a decrease in cross-discipline or even cross-field theory development and research.
The large number of additional journals will need to each claim their own ground within the readership population (see point 2), i.e. given that readers are faced with more papers then they could ever read, why should they read your journal?
The likely result is specialization of the journals, possibly even ever increasing specialization to ever finer fields of research within disciplines. This can, and I would argue is likely to, lead to narrowly defined fields where the academic conversation gets pulled into small fields of attention and is increasingly less exposed to ideas from other fields and disciplines.
To be clear, I’m not saying peer review is working perfectly (or even claiming that it’s working well). I’m just pointing out the alternatives aren’t necessarily better and can and will lead to their own problems.
So this guy gets a bad review, never addresses a single point here; therefore the entire peer review system is cancer? Then the editor of this journal did exactly what journal editors are supposed to do and published it despite the apparently unjustified negative review. So the system worked despite the apparent bias of the peer reviewer. It's almost like it's a system with some checks and balances. Which is unarguably superior to a system where a small handful of journal editors are the undisputed gatekeepers.
And if you don't like it, then self-publish. The internet makes that so easy I'm practically doing it right now.
true dat. The "old system" mentioned had the editor peer review it. That was better? I doubt it. And as you said, nowadays you can just publish it anywhere if you want to.
I think a lot of people, especially outside the scientific field, say "peer review" to mean "mainstream science that has been considered by other mainstream scientists and thus is now worthy of attention and not just your own crackpot idea."
As in, "you have a theory the Earth is flat? Well, have it peer-reviewed and then I'll look into it."
no science needs "peer review". It only takes a single person with one good correct idea, with no supporters, to be right and for everyone else to be wrong.
If a published paper is wrong, or you believe it to be wrong, test it yourself and see if it holds up. If it holds up, write your own paper saying so. If it doesn't hold up, write your own paper saying so. But do not deny a person their paper because it lacks "peer review".
Totally! That ping pong called "peer review" does not serve innovation. In engineering, reviewers have every incentive to reject work and come up with weird justification. Ego is 95% of the game, so the more your work is novel, the fewer chances your reviewers understand and ask questions to the point.
What are some of those incentives, particularly in engineering?
One of the best conversations I’ve ever listened to. Required listening.
So whats the alternative? How do we ensure the quality of papers?
I'd be interested to see how the dynamic evolved if anyone submitting a paper was to request at least (for instance) three peers to review their work, and then had the paper published with the list of peer reviewers on the front cover.
Sounds like the system worked. The reviewer did a poor job and still the article got trough.
The difficult thing is how we don't pass through bad articles? ultimately we don't want to publish bad articles as they are used by bad people at the worst part.
Look at all the experiments that were published without peer review that we found out they are not reproducible.
If you're talking about the massive reproducibility problem that became apparent in psychological studies several years ago, that isn't from a lack of peer review. It's from a lack of reproduction studies.
@@joelhenderson3723 You are right, the point is that the system tries to minimize the risk of the article being poorly made in order to improve the field.
Its not an open facebook group that every opinion counts.
It is true that it is hard to publish, specially if you don't have the record. Showing the exception has a problem does not mean the system is broken.
I agree that the system is not perfect, but like alot of things in life, you need somehow to convince people you are right before they think you are right.
@@joelhenderson3723 I just read through the book "Skin in the game"... I never even knew that the problem of psychology is so huge that most of the stuff that comes out of it may not have material use.
alright man, I know I'm subnormal and I'm no scientist, but Eric weinstein just keep saying peer review is stupid and doesn't really explain how it's stupid
He says at the end: an injunction from the peers to prevent your work to be published. Your work should pass the bs meter by the editor only. Then, published, it will be peer reviewed
@@cristianstoica4544 i don't get it. his story doesn't seem like a good example. if this carol was someone who wielded influence or clout over the editor, the result would be even worse. why is the editor necessarily a better gatekeeper for bs than peers? we are all humans
@Eustratios so your argument is that the less gatekeeping, the better? following that line of thought, we should simply allow publish all papers without scrutiny or quality control
You are all (as is Eric) forgetting the fact that there are way too many papers submitted to journals like this for one editor to review.
There’s an ocean of papers produced each year and the selection mechanism (whether through an editor, peer review, or something else) is _also_ playing a role in helping academics decide what papers to read as they sure can’t read everything that is published let alone produced.
If every academic is just faced with an ocean of published papers they will first drown in it, then you get to a situation where academics are trying to have a discussion but they’ve all just read completely different papers and then they’ll ‘naturally’ gravitate to preferred sources that claim a consensus given status of ‘most esteemed’, ‘highest quality’, etc. source for new research and theories. And that’s exactly what these journals are. It may take a new form (a web site, hub, database, whatever), but the underlying mechanism will still be that of someone or some smaller group making selections.
I've been waiting decades for someone to say this. THANKYOU.
And yet science progressed in those decades. My phone has more computing power than the room filling computers NASA used to send men to the moon. AIDs is not the death sentence it was in the 1980s. We've discovered exo planets. The list goes on.
@@anonymoususer6037 Which doesn't show that peer review was the reason, or that science wouldn't have been better off without it. Just because something was a particular way, doesn't mean that's the way it needed to be.
@@evanhadkins5532 But it does show that peer review isn't a 'cancer'. Most of the papers that come across my desk need serious reworking from just a composition/rhetorical point of view. And almost every academic has horror stories about the reviewing process, but most of the time we rework our papers, resubmit somewhere else and keep at it. And most of the time those papers get published.
It's an imperfect system because, well, it's a human activity. I imagine there are minor tweaks to be made for improvement, but overall it's better to have the papers reviewed than not.
@@anonymoususer6037 No it doesn't, it just shows that the patient survived; or is in remission.
@@evanhadkins5532 And so the negative effects of the 'cancer' are no longer there.
They also ignore how peer review can actually improve a paper. I doubt either of them have been reviewers themselves.
The story they are peddling is simplistic.
Back around 2012-2014, there was a story about the then editor of the LANCET, he claimed at least 50 % of peer reviewed articles were highly faulty, I thought that this would be a big story at the time, but other that the original article i read it seemed to go no further.
Peer review is the only thing that allows us to separate real science from bullshit. Is it perfect? No, but at this point there is nothing better as far as I know.
What Eric is saying is that it should just be up to the editors of the journals. Einstein wasn't peer-reviewed. Neither was Newton.
@@oo88oo I think that could only possibly lead to more pervasive misinformation. With special interests in the west as powerful as they are, I'm sure corporations would have their hands all over scientific journals. The only thing stopping corporate backed "scientists" from pushing their flawed research into mainstream science is the peer-review process
I remember one time a sent a paper to a journal and the reviewer did not understand the math. And I'm like to the editor: "how is that my fault?". I got the paper accepted.
In my field, that is science policy and politics, peer review often has obvious ideological implications. Some of my articles that contained critique of neoliberal tendencies in science policy has been refused because of negative reviews. The reviewers were wellknown supporters of those policies. I made some few changes in the articles and sent them to other journals where they were easily accepted. Those articles later became cited by many, so it seems they had something of interest to say. Another article I wrote, where I criticized national alcohol policies, was almost impossible to get accepted for publishing. The reviewers were involved in national alcohol policy and didn’t like the critique. Finally, after trying 3-4 journals. I found a very good one that had no strings attached to government authorities and it was accepted.
To me, it seems like his beef is with weaponization of reviewing process in small scientific fields that scientists hold personal feuds between them. As a scientist in the biomedical field myself, I have seen reviewers involving their personal bias on a topic with a paper, but I have never seen hostility vs an individual have an impact on said individuals paper. Seems like a clear conflict of interest that would require a re-review by another unbiased scientist.
Peer Review is the foundation of modern trust in science. Science simply is not reputable without it, especially in the modern internet era. As they point out, journals like Nature rose to prominence because the editors took personal responsibility for the quality of publications therein. This is still the case, but that position of responsibility has partially shifted from the editors onto all of the scientific community. The scope of modern scientific research has ballooned to enormous sizes, and there’s simply no way a team of highly respected editors could reasonably keep up with the volume of submissions on their own (200+ per week to Nature alone). Therefore peer review is a necessity for the process to function. Papers are passed among the best educated peer researchers in their field and the process is guided by those well respected editors to make sure everything is on the up and up, which you’ll notice is exactly what happened in his anecdote. A professional put out her opinion on his paper, and then he took that into consideration and made the changes he felt necessary, after which the editors chose to approve or dismiss the final draft as they felt it deserved. The process worked exactly as intended in this story.
And even if we take his issues with his peer’s review as representative of the larger scientific community (which there is no evidence to do so...), that still doesn’t support the claim that peer review is bad. You could claim that politics is a problem within the community, or that the peer review system has flaws that need reformed, but you could not use it as evidence that Peer Review as a concept is bad.
At the end, he suggests that we should just allow people to publish freely in well respected public journals and let the peer review come later in the public reception of the paper. There are numerous problems with this suggestion. First of all, what happened to editors being personally responsible for the quality of publications in their journals? Two minutes ago editors needed to be more active in curating their journals, and now they need to be laissez faire and let the public decide? Would it not destroy the journal’s reputation in the scientific community if they published a string of questionable quality papers with their name and platform attached? The second major issue is that in the era of the internet, bad information only needs to be presented for it to spread like wildfire, and any attempts to correct it later can often go unnoticed. We see this all the time on social media, but perhaps the best example of this is in the scientific community is the infamous vaccine-autism paper. The paper that claimed a link between autism and vaccines was deeply flawed; the paper was quickly retracted by the journal and decried by the community, and the doctor even lost their license over it. But even despite that, an entire movement has sprung up around that single bit of misinformation. So clearly, it’s a bad idea to just publish conclusions and let the court of public opinion decide.
Tl;dr: No, peer review isn’t cancer to the scientific community simply because you had one bad experience with a colleague. Without peer review, there’s no reason to have any trust in the quality of research being published.
Some people in the comments are saying essentially "what's the alternative?" In my opinion the alternative is not grant too much weight to the peer review process.
But still more weight than an absence of peer review process.
all things being equal, I would say.
"The Alternative" was mentioned in the clip: journal editors who are competent and take responsibility for their decisions as to what they publish
I like that too. I guess what I don’t like, that Eric hits on is the issue of peer review or possible lack there-of being a knee jerk reaction to whatever paper somebody wrote that would too easily discredit it on those grounds alone.
Who cares it’s all a business model to be played with. People who want to know about how things work seek wisdom
"Peer review is a cancer" says the guy who refused to respond to criticism because it did not pass peer review.
can someone Explain the proclems he mentioned when he said that anyone with enough knowledge in that field would understand the implicstions of the double helix stuff? why was it agreed upon that that thing was not to be peer reviewed? etc?
He explained it in the latter half of the Joe Rogan 1494 podcast.
@@GrubKiller436 YOu could have answered lol i watched it and still dont understand and i want to know stuff
@@dago6410 I should not claim that I know everything. Because I don't. But I will first reply by saying:
When people see what Bret is saying, the reason why are not spreading Bret's information is because they don't believe that there's anything in it for them. Not only do they not see there being anything substantial in it for themself, and so treat it lightly, ... They think they are too small to challenge what we've already established.
The telomeres stuff is basically going against our already-established system of using rats as the basis of how we're going to distribute prescribed drugs all over western society.
To add to this, and this is going beyond what Bret is saying now, I very much believe that the pharmaceutical industry *KNOWS* its drugs are *massively destroying* people's lives... *but* they just don't care. Because it's a business. And they are making a hell lot of money from it, at the expense of people's lives.
@@GrubKiller436 I got all of that, i waas asking specifically about the double helix stuff, i maybe need to give you a timestamp....
@@dago6410 I imagine it was so because a peer review could end up in stolen work or controversy for someone.
This is why stack overflow is more valuable than any computer science journal. Stack overflow puts peer injunction on record in view of an infinite number of witnesses who can counter.
There are a finite number of human beings.
@@sciencecompliance235I'm optimistically assuming infinite future time and no extinction events
Pretty arrogant to say Bret was in line for a nobel prize before he had done any work.
Not exactly a lack of arrogance in that room...
Technically he could have been at the very end of the line with everyone else before him
Seems to me they're essentially talking about one of the major theories of truth (or discovering truth), the theory of pragmatic truth. Essentially, this theory says you put your work out into an open forum and let it be tested/applied, and over time a community of inquirers can choose to clarify, justify, refine or refute. What "peer review" does is yank it out and prevent it from even reaching the open forum.
The open forum isn't always correct though. It's why you get things like "the bell curve" and "soy increases estrogen" myths. The worst thing that could happen if people in the open forum split over some research and end up believing different facts, which will end up becoming seperate scientific idealogies.
Just as the most effective (both in terms of quality and progress) form of government would be an informed democracy, so must science be evaluated both as an individual's own, new work and as communally sound practice.
The failure of peer review, like the failure of democracies or dictatorships is due to a lack of either quality or progress. Peer review does an ok job at both, allowing innovative studies to pass through while checking for bad practices in awful ones.
Boboddy B , what‘s wrong with separate scientific ideologies? „Science advances one funeral at a time“, and the more SJW inclined scientists will do everything they can to prevent a funeral.
@@boboddyb2217 The bell curve is not a myth.
@@boboddyb2217 "The failure of peer review" no. You have to point out specific failed peer reviews, there is no fucking way you can say "The failure of peer review" like it's a grandfather clock that regularly misses the beat. There is NO WAY, every single peer reviewed article out there is a failure. There is also no way half of them are without checking. And you would die of old age at least 14 times before you managed to check half the relevant literature.
In my experience most reviewers are competent. Their suggested modifications to an article can be insightful and lead to an improvement in the form in which it finally appears in print.
When an author has confidence in the value of his/her work, rejection by a journal is usually solved simply by submitting to a different journal.
I can recall only one experience similar to that described by Bret. The reviewer’s knowledge of the subject matter was clearly inadequate. He perceived many alleged “mistakes” which were actually his own misundertandings. I rewrote the paper, trying to satisfy this reviewer by including clarifications (which shouldn’t have been necessary for a reader familiar with the subject matter). When I’d gone through this time-wasting process _three times_ and he _still_ didn’t “get it” I emailed the journal editor explaining what was happening. _The following day_ I got a response from the editor: “the paper is accepted for publication”!!
[I’m a mathematician and theoretical physicist.]
Admittedly: the tradition of “peer review” is not perfect. But what should replace it? A scientific journal must have _some_ way of protecting itself from printing rubbish...
Agreed! It is not a fun process, but there can be surprises both good and bad.
Nothing funnier than hard scientists yelling at eachother. “Your quantum mechanics theory is a fucking hackjob and you know it”
This is true; I had a paper "held in review" permanently due to the unpopular subject matter.
Care to share the manuscript?
@@reese8097 Can you provide a peer reviewed article claiming those things?
Every academic has their paper submission and review horror story. It happens to almost everyone.
Reese races aren’t different. Everyone is 99.99% biologically similar. And gender is not sex you moron
Reese Are my intuitions inconsistent with reality?
No, it's the scientists who are wrong.
"You moron... YOU were in line for the Nobel prize!" S-tier brotherly berating 😂
How many papers have these guys published and now they believe they have enough experience to throw peer review out the window? Google scholar shows very few papers published.
Peer review is messy and frustrating. But so are all the other steps in doing research. Every step has moments that can be like pulling teeth so I am not sure why this step should be different. It is just this step takes some people skills.
And there can be some surprise upsides to peer review. I know one researcher got the idea for a paper at a conference that won best paper from an anonymous reviewer. For me, a reviewer caught a mistake in my proof that slipped by all the co-authors.
Peer review for research funding is even worse. You will never get funding for any truly original, let alone revolutionary, idea or approach. It only favors funding more of the same.
Eric is a real treasure..brilliant mind.
i think i heard Brett get to the end of two sentences in which Eric did not interrupt him
I would like to point out that problems with peer review does not mean that the process of peer review is globally bad. Like any human endeavor it is fallible and subject to malicious individuals. Obviously, Brett's anecdote is an example of someone exploiting the process for personal reasons - but the intent of legitimate peer review is to strengthen your work and address REAL shortcomings. It is a tool, and like all tools can be used for good and for ill. To Eric's point, yes the process that occurs after publication is important but post-publication critique is often lost on even trained researchers as it is published separately - researchers, and definitely the public, like to find a single publication to support their notions and stop there.
Really, the argument should be the old "who watches the watchmen" and in Brett's story, that was the editors who overrode a malicious peer-reviewer. Editors should definitely be that next line of oversight and be open to criticizing the reviewers themselves. Remember also that just because one journal is on some shady shit doesn't mean you can't submit to a different journal as well.
You two are Gold in our time!!!! And would have been in any time.
So here's a question. They criticize the peer review process, and question consensus-based science. But they also think that the consensus view on climate change is probably correct. On what grounds?
You get a certain back and forth from these two that you wouldn’t get in an interview between two people who weren’t siblings
THANK YOU.
You’re heroes for saying this!
So the old system was also getting your paper reviewed by peers, just not anonymously?
Obviously, peer review is the only option in science, but there are different types of peer review.
no science needs "peer review". It only takes a single person with one good correct idea, with no supporters, to be right and for everyone else to be wrong.
If a published paper is wrong, or you believe it to be wrong, test it yourself and see if it holds up. If it holds up, write your own paper saying so. If it doesn't hold up, write your own paper saying so. But do not deny a person their paper because it lacks "peer review".
Should papers with errors just be published as is? I'm not sure I see a better alternative to checking the work
Yeah, peer review can be a problem, sometimes unexpected and maybe it is just part of the training.
One thing to remember is that publications cost money, so the more you put out the more grant money is needed, and somehow it correlates with evaluations and salaries, even when it saves money for that as well as improves the science outcome.
So there you have a money problem. More biotechs are needed from academia, but economy-money systems need rational reform too.
My professor always complain about the editors of the journals, a lot of them haven't got a clue about what you have written, and they just want things to be portrayed in certain way!
so, how is the old method better at preventing bias? what if the editor just doesn't want to publish anything to radical or anything that would disprove their own work?
I am sure that she did understand the paper. She was just envious.
it's fun because it's a podcast but also it's an older brother typically mad when he watches his little brother get somehow "attacked" by big bullies without reacting properly. Both of you are necessary in these "half-science" times.
Review should be a double blind process where you don't know who reviews it and who you are reviewing
Can anyone lead me to a good source on the story of Watson and Crick that Eric mentions?? I'm looking for it but I can't really find anything on the editors not wanting to publish it
Her name is Carol W. Greider
Peer Review is flawed as much as individual scientists are flawed, but it’s still better to have a couple of competent if still flawed colleagues look at a piece of research than one biased editor make all the decisions. This was a disappointing irrational rant about a flawed process with no offer whatsoever of improvement or alternatives
They offered an alternative at the end: lower the bar for publication and let peers put their name to their criticisms after the fact. Double blind peer review isn’t as innocent as its supporters would have you believe. It enables a lot of nastiness on the part of the reviewer.
We do not complain about cancer, because there is no alternative.
"No review" is probably not better than peer review. And "review by editor who does not know the field because he is not a peer" is not better either.
And it's not cancer just because one guy says so. Someone has to take a look at the papers before they are published, otherwise we all drown in nonsense.
I understand what is being said but would it not be dangerous to the readiness and trustworthiness of citation? Or would it merely necessitate more scrutiny in forming one’s citations? For papers to undergo peer review in the current method surely allows for quicker and more reliable further work to be undertaken?
As a published scientist, i must say that this is just blabberung from a guy who‘s mad he had to revise his paper and whined about it
😂😂😂😂😂
Eric Weinstein has very little room to talk about the what he considers flaws of peer review. I’m sure there have been instances where they have had less than good peer reviews. Everyone has had these instances. Eric is just upset because his “geometric unity” is something that almost no physicist takes seriously. He won’t release any paper for critique by any other field and then sits on his podcast and acts like the fox jumping for the grapes. He doesn’t engage with other physicists and then says, “why should I, they are nitpicking and biased, i win, bye bye.” This isn’t science, if his ideas hold any water he can get some supporters and eventually change the world. If he gets turned down at one place go to another. If he really and truly is going to change the world with this idea, someone is going to stand behind him, but these IDW types acting like the lone paragons of academic truth and honesty just goes to show how unacademic they are in reality.
I wish I had these problems.
Wasn't the impetus for peer review the fact that editors were being swamped by the publish or perish phenomenon? Having said that, I absolutely agree with having a preprint server so that submissions are old news by the time reviewers see them.
no science needs "peer review". It only takes a single person with one good correct idea, with no supporters, to be right and for everyone else to be wrong.
If a published paper is wrong, or you believe it to be wrong, test it yourself and see if it holds up. If it holds up, write your own paper saying so. If it doesn't hold up, write your own paper saying so. But do not deny a person their paper because it lacks "peer review".
I am by no means no scientist but imagine we lived on a planet X and everyone save but one was blind and all those hacks gathered around and pompously "declared" : "Color does not exist"
This is why my skin cr.a.wl.s when I hear the term "well so and so theory has been mostly recognized'... Umm excuse me? Recognized by exzacttly erffin who?
Eric has the deGrasse Tyson problem.
"The problem with peer review" Translation: i dont want other experts finding out about the nonsense i spew
Peer Review is not so meaningful a thing when you exclude, fire, censor the peers you don't like.
Baigandine L Yes, but are you talking about the reviewer or the person being reviewed. It appears Bret and Eric would like to cancel some peers from reviewing...
You guys should have a discussion re peer review and administrative cowardice with Peter Ridd . Former physics professor at JCU Australia . That’s a chat I’d be interested in .
The problem is not with peer review. Its with the peers. Your institutions have been infected with a cancer. An ideology which is using peer review to stifle work that doesnt promote their dogma.
Wow, older brother giving younger brother some tough love, and Bret takes it on the chin, hardly flinching, after all, he has faced the whole mob, I trust he can roll with the punches.
Correct me if I'm getting this wrong:
Those who publish many papers have high status and therefore they get many reviewers/citations.
The problem is that for people like Bret Weinstein, who may have less published papers than others, these guys get 'peer-reviewed' by very few others.
The quantity and quality of his peer-review is low.
It's a barrier. Even though Bret Weinstein has something important to say, he has no voice because his 'status' is too low in the community.
Yea. At 5:36. There's a gap between what laymen like myself think "peer review" is and what Eric is calling "peer review." Public discussion of scientific data and hypotheses is in fact important for science-post publication (birthing ideas to the public). To that extent, saying "peer review is a problem" is inaccurate. The problem appears to be their publication process. Bad headline.
Any time eric swears i get happy.
Peer review is not cancer. It is actually always been necessary. Is it flawed? Yes. But hardly is it cancer. The story Bret explains is a conflict of interest and clearly needs another person to review it that isn't her.
This is so true! Especially in psychology.
We have so much idiology in our Science, and people "cancle" the ones who try to fight that nonsense.
Most fields are so small that you know who will do the peer review in advance, so if you are not in good relations with the person who is doing the review he can block you from publishing. Also one of my colleges published a paper that was blocked at first because someone claimed the work as being done by them even if it wasn't , after proofing that the person in question lied the paper got published. There is a lot of fraud on high lvl colleges when the papers are concerned. MOST professors don't do the number of papers they need to hold the job so they just put their names on other peoples work and they do it in circle so instead of 10 professors to write 10 papers they will write only 1 and put the names on the other 9, making it obvious that they are just jerking each other off. By doing this they block every new person to enter the college without sucking up to them. That is criminal and ruins lives or people who are more competent than the professors. I seen it with my eyes and continue to see it.
Peer review has really been a cancer for philosophy because they write things that are unapproachable by other people and are compelled to do this when many don’t want to in order to get tenure.
This points out that peer review worked in this case. The editor can overrule a peer reviewer. What journal chooses one peer reviewer, anyway? There was likely a second or third reviewer. Why be surprised by a low quality review? Happens all the time!
To the Weinstein brothers:
I think that the modern "peer review" approach might have come from an adaptation of more primitive cultures ways of discussing an important issue and arriving to a consensus while informing and teaching their community. And that is ok, but the problem is, that if true, it should be acknowledged. No? It actually should be a valid method to arrive to a useful and fair conclusion, but the problem is in the twisting/twickling to achieve something else, which resemble 'dirty politics'.
I concluded that money and power and eventually survival play a key role in these sometimes self defeating events, so swamps develop and grow thick. If it is due to unethical or 'wackonic' concerns about risky behavior in the general public, then efficiently address that, but the solution to wear the medals of honor has been WEIRD, so the most evolved outcome is a foggy situation, with lots of distracting happenings.
I also say the same thing applies to 'ratings' as a validation of the work, you know the rating from the peers and the public. I heard that one before graduation and their 'functional' solution was similar to the social media competition of today. Again it resembles shameless and dirty politics. The feeling and visual image ends up being that of walking through a swampy mine field. But it is supposed to be science, based on facts, truth, and the foundation for the next innovations supposedly beneficial to the unique species in charge of the planet called human.
It looks like it is recurrent theme in human society, a duality that needs to be understood and somehow redo to favor what science should achieve.
Connected dots? you do it, but it really needs adjustment dis linked of the above. true quality without make up should matter too, beyond rhetoric , all cultures need to improve without totalitarianism and find a way to neutralize the 'predators'. So the internet has been useful, and cleaning should exclude harsh methods or everything is conveniently forgotten for those whose only endowment is your hard earned little knowledge. Ufffff.
Great comment I appreciate some kind of reasoning in this anti-intellectual world of ours.
Seems like he got a good result in the end. Reviewer says it is crap, he rebutted their review so they publish it and let the readers decide. I think the problem is the reviewer got emotional about it, not the process.
Who reviews the peer reviewers?
Oh my god the problem with peer review isn't that the bar is too high and some PHD student's paper got rejected from Nature. The problem is the bar is too low and too many shitty student papers make it into literature that literally can't even be reproduced
While I agree that peer review has gone too far. I think there is place for both peer review and open publication. Everything in moderation.
Ohh, I’d love to have Eric in my corner, he’s fiercely loyal & protective ..