"criticism is not tolerated"
These are the people doing research and peer-reviewing? No wonder the quality of research is so bad. Criticism should be encouraged, not suppressed.
These are the people doing research and peer-reviewing? No wonder the quality of research is so bad. Criticism should be encouraged, not suppressed.
(Actually, at APS meetings and sectional meetings, almost everyone gets a chance to speak. However, not everyone attends the "new perspectives in physics" sub-meeting when there's a talk on another topic in the adjoining room.)
This sort of groupthink rejection sees more light when an issue is closer to public policy. In the nascent field of climate science, for example, I wouldn't be surprised to see papers claiming global cooling or stasis rejected almost immediately. Almost everyone in the field these days would appear to believe that global warming is occurring.
Coming back to my original thesis; the peer-review process is full of criticism. Search around for web pages aimed exclusively at coaxing young graduate students out of peer-review induced depression. Peer review can be brutal, and the anonymity can double its impact.