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Comment by Rochus | Hacker News Reader

You mean peer reviewers of Nature did a bad job?

This was a Comment (dated October 2018), not a paper.

Also, it was not published in "Nature", it was published in "Nature Climate Change".

Now "Nature" (the publisher) has many journals, and many of them has a name that starts with "Nature", but they are different journals, with different teams and different qualities. https://www.nature.com/siteindex#journals-N

So Nature publishes comments without reviewing them?

It very much seems like they do, doesn't it?

That assumption is wrong. Take it as a single data point about the reliability of their peer review process. EDIT: I really mean that is a single data point. A usually reputable publisher can make mistake sometimes.

If you are suggesting to make inference from a single data point, you kind of proving the necessity of peer review.

I was suggesting the opposite.

Yes, see, here we have respect for science only if a) it is our specific field, or b) fits average tech bro sensibilities. Obviously, we are completely objective and not emotional or biased, because we know JavaScript.

Not only is peer review not some omniscient god, Nature isn't exactly flawless either. Plenty of top tier journals fuck up all the time.

peer review is not infallible. Stop worshipping it.

Nobody was "worshipping" it, and nobody has asserted that it's infallible; that being the case, your comment is entirely content-free.

Implying that they cannot do a bad job is an assertion in infallibility.

Who implied that? I didn't.

Do you have a better concept?

I think their implication is that you'd simply make use of peer review without treating it as infallible.

Treating something or someone as infallible contradicts the basic principles of science.

So then you must agree, "Peer reviewers of Nature did a bad job" is a poor dismissal of their criticisms

That was my question; glad you saw it; it's still unanswered; providing testable evidence for a claim is another basic principle of science; if the article or the reviewers are wrong, the top commenter has to give them a chance to recognise that by providing evidence for review.

I'm not following your point anymore. I wish you would just explain your criticism instead of making these snarky comments.

What snarky comments? I asked a question. You even quoted it. There is no reason to become aggressive.

All your comments are snarky!

If you're polite and respectful to people, they respond better. Give it a try. :-)

And your comment could be taken as condescending. I don't see how that adds anything to the discussion.

A wiki

Then anyone can correct mistakes

I wouldn't publish the results of my multi year scientific effort on a platform "anyone" could make changes. Reviewer are expected to have a suitable qualification and experience and no bias. The publisher knows the reviewers and can select suitable ones. In a wiki, where anyone can publish or change anything without control, the scientific level - at least in certain areas - will inevitably level down. There is no perfect system, but there are many worse than we already have.

> no bias.

Is that a joke? Have you ever been in academia? Bias is everywhere. Bias towards certain hypotheses, political outlooks, methods, etc. The more senior someone is in a field, the more biased they tend to be! I've seen the founder of a field vote to reject a paper because it was "already known" because he skimmed the paper and misread it. There are entire fields of Alzheimer's research that are suppressed because they don't work with the Field's Favorite Aggregating Protein. I've witnessed people add spin to the conclusion section of a paper so that it looks less politically incorrect, and I've also witnessed that this step is both necessary and effective for getting a "dicey" paper published. Get out of here if you're going to assert that scientists are these objective Vulcan types that are "above the fray". They are some of the most "biased" and opinionated people in existence!!

> Have you ever been in academia?

Yes, did several studies and also a PhD with a Nobel laureat and some publications. I don't claim our present system is perfect; it's far from it; but I don't know a better one; thus my question: Do you have a better concept?

There are plenty of other options, the one I'll focus on is already is in widespread use: science seems to progress fine using only preprints. It is the norm in physics and becoming the norm for biology to read the preprint of a paper long before it is published in a journal. Official peer review adds very little value over this system.

But it cannot always remain a preprint; at some point the author must decide on the definitive version and publish it; citing a preprint is also problematic if it is in fact a "moving target"; preprints, however, have a decisive advantage: one has published more quickly and can make subsequent corrections.

EDIT: Preprints are actually not a replacement, but essentially loosen the submission deadline and increase the number of (potential) reviewers. But even with this, many disadvantages you criticise still exist; the public reviewers not appointed by the publisher can also be wrong, and the outcry of indignation can be so loud that the author's superiors enforce a withdrawal of the publication.

>I wouldn't publish the results of my multi year scientific effort on a platform "anyone" could make changes.

Publishing is taken far too importantly in academia

>Reviewer are expected to have a suitable qualification and experience and no bias

But they do not. My last paper was rejected when the reviewers hardly understood the basics of the topic. And I have been assigned papers to review about topics I have never worked on

>In a wiki, where anyone can publish or change anything without control, the scientific level - at least in certain areas - will inevitably level down.

Not every edit needs to be approved

Open source with pull requests was not so bad for software quality

>There is no perfect system, but there are many worse than we already have.

The current system is especially bad. It takes to much time to find the papers, read the papers, write the papers, and review the papers

That’s a terrible response.

Why?

You can criticize something without having a replacement.

And how is that supposed to help us in this case? It doesn't have to be a "replacement", but at least some suggestions for improvement; just rejecting without any suggestions is not constructive.

So “no”.

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