Harvard Physicist Discusses Sham Peer Review and Publication Process

Has science taken a wrong turn? If so, what corrections are needed? Chronicles of scientific misbehavior. The role of heretic-pioneers and forbidden questions in the sciences. Is peer review working? The perverse "consensus of leading scientists." Good public relations versus good science.
michael.suede
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Harvard Physicist Discusses Sham Peer Review and Publication Process

Unread post by michael.suede » Sat Apr 18, 2020 4:59 am

Eric Weinstein, Managing director of Thiel Capital, who holds a PhD in physics from Harvard, discusses the sham peer review and publication process he experienced while getting his degree.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fgGZMRJ15oY

crawler
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Re: Harvard Physicist Discusses Sham Peer Review and Publication Process

Unread post by crawler » Sun Apr 19, 2020 4:00 am

Interesting. There might be such secret societies behind the less secret mafias that control key aspects of most of the sciences.
But its a pity that his early work was mainly about math dimensions, ie probably rubbish, of no future use.
And once again a mathematician (he) predicts another possible particle, probably rubbish.
STR is krapp -- & GTR is mostly krapp.
The present Einsteinian Dark Age of science will soon end – for the times they are a-changin'.
The aether will return – it never left.

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neilwilkes
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Re: Harvard Physicist Discusses Sham Peer Review and Publication Process

Unread post by neilwilkes » Sun Jun 07, 2020 11:08 am

No secret societies are necessary - the peer review system itself, whilst well meaning in the first place, almost guarantees orthodoxy in thought wherever it is used simply because it matters not one iota how many 'peers' agree or disagree with a concept. It matters not a jot how many people form any consensus - they can still all be wrong.
Galileo was a victim of peer review at the time.
You will never get a man to understand something his salary depends on him not understanding.

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nick c
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Re: Harvard Physicist Discusses Sham Peer Review and Publication Process

Unread post by nick c » Sun Jun 07, 2020 3:56 pm

Halton Arp's book Seeing Red... is an eye opening testimony to the illusion of the peer review system's ability to move toward the truth.
The book is loaded with examples of what can only be described as religious fervor in the repression of valid scientific discussion.
Here are few good quotes:

"I gloomily came to the ironic conclusion that if you take a highly intelligent person and give them the best possible, elite education, then you will most likely wind up with an academic who is completely impervious to reality."

"...they illustrated an unfortunate tendency in science, namely that when presented with two possibilities, scientists tend to choose the wrong one."

"Right from the beginning in science, authority tends to override independent judgement."

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neilwilkes
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Re: Harvard Physicist Discusses Sham Peer Review and Publication Process

Unread post by neilwilkes » Mon Jun 08, 2020 11:27 am

It's a great book & a fascinating read.
Also worthwhile is his "Quasars, Redshifts & Controversies" too.
Both highly recommended
You will never get a man to understand something his salary depends on him not understanding.

allynh
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Re: Harvard Physicist Discusses Sham Peer Review and Publication Process

Unread post by allynh » Mon Apr 25, 2022 12:43 am

I'm sure that I've mentioned this recently, but can't remember where.

When I google using the following string I get a ton of articles:

how science is suppressed by "peer review"

Among many of the articles this one is useful:

Three myths about scientific peer review
https://michaelnielsen.org/blog/three-m ... er-review/

This is from an editor:

Peer review: a flawed process at the heart of science and journals
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1420798/

And this is a paper that I stumbled on along the way that will highlight many of the problems.

How to Reject any Scientific Manuscript
https://vixra.org/pdf/0907.0020v1.pdf
Two extreme positions have been articulated. Based upon his empirical research, Armstrong (1982) formulated what he called "the author's formula", a set of rules that authors should use to increase the likelihood and speed of acceptance of their manuscripts. "Authors should (1) not pick an important problem, (2) not challenge existing beliefs, (3) not obtain surprising results, (4) not use simple methods, (5) not provide full disclosure, and (6) not write clearly." Taschner (2007) even opposes "the illusion that papers written by researchers are really read by those colleagues who keep the power of important decisions. In my view, the situation – at least in some disciplines – is much more miserable: often no longer anything is read, but, in the best case, good friends among the gatekeepers are asked by phone or email whether the author really is suitable."
The key point about peer review is how it is often used to suppress articles by competitors. Grant money goes to the victor. If you are a reviewer you can suppress a competitor from publishing while you submit your own grant requests.

Read the book "Green Earth" by Kim Stanley Robinson. On one hand the story is a "dream" for "Global Warming" believers, while blatantly showing how the various approval committees in the NSF abuse their position to further their own interests and the companies that they are associated with.

The book is a great example, on many levels, and I am still harvesting useful stuff from it.

BeAChooser
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Re: Harvard Physicist Discusses Sham Peer Review and Publication Process

Unread post by BeAChooser » Mon Apr 25, 2022 6:02 am

http://theweek.com/articles/618141/big-science-broken
Science is broken.

That's the thesis of a must-read article in First Things magazine (BAC - http://www.firstthings.com/article/2016 ... ic-regress ), in which William A. Wilson accumulates evidence that a lot of published research is false. But that's not even the worst part.

Advocates of the existing scientific research paradigm usually smugly declare that while some published conclusions are surely false, the scientific method has "self-correcting mechanisms" that ensure that, eventually, the truth will prevail. Unfortunately for all of us, Wilson makes a convincing argument that those self-correcting mechanisms are broken.

... snip ...

The peer review process doesn't work. Most observers of science guffaw at the so-called "Sokal affair," where a physicist named Alan Sokal submitted a gibberish paper to an obscure social studies journal, which accepted it. Less famous is a similar hoodwinking of the very prestigious British Medical Journal, to which a paper with eight major errors was submitted. Not a single one of the 221 scientists who reviewed the paper caught all the errors in it, and only 30 percent of reviewers recommended that the paper be rejected. Amazingly, the reviewers who were warned that they were in a study and that the paper might have problems with it found no more flaws than the ones who were in the dark.

This is serious. In the preclinical cancer study mentioned above, the authors note that "some non-reproducible preclinical papers had spawned an entire field, with hundreds of secondary publications that expanded on elements of the original observation, but did not actually seek to confirm or falsify its fundamental basis."

This gets into the question of the sociology of science. It's a familiar bromide that "science advances one funeral at a time." The greatest scientific pioneers were mavericks and weirdos. Most valuable scientific work is done by youngsters. Older scientists are more likely to be invested, both emotionally and from a career and prestige perspective, in the regnant paradigm, even though the spirit of science is the challenge of regnant paradigms.

Why, then, is our scientific process so structured as to reward the old and the prestigious? Government funding bodies and peer review bodies are inevitably staffed by the most hallowed (read: out of touch) practitioners in the field. The tenure process ensures that in order to further their careers, the youngest scientists in a given department must kowtow to their elders' theories or run a significant professional risk. Peer review isn't any good at keeping flawed studies out of major papers, but it can be deadly efficient at silencing heretical views.

All of this suggests that the current system isn't just showing cracks, but is actually broken, and in need of major reform. There is very good reason to believe that much scientific research published today is false, there is no good way to sort the wheat from the chaff, and, most importantly, that the way the system is designed ensures that this will continue being the case.

jackokie
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Re: Harvard Physicist Discusses Sham Peer Review and Publication Process

Unread post by jackokie » Mon Apr 25, 2022 7:09 pm

"I would rather have questions that can't be answered than answers that can't be questioned." ~ Richard P. Feynman

"Science is the organized skepticism in the reliability of expert opinion." ~ Richard P. Feynman

"No government has the right to decide on the truth of scientific principles, nor to prescribe in any way the character of the questions investigated. Neither may a government determine the aesthetic value of artistic creations, nor limit the forms of literacy or artistic expression. Nor should it pronounce on the validity of economic, historic, religious, or philosophical doctrines. Instead it has a duty to its citizens to maintain the freedom, to let those citizens contribute to the further adventure and the development of the human race." ~ Richard P. Feynman

"It does not matter who you are, or how smart you are, or what title you have, or how many of you there are, and certainly not how many papers your side has published, if your prediction is wrong then your hypothesis is wrong. Period." ~ Richard P. Feynman

"The test of all knowledge is experiment." ~ Richard P. Feynman

"Progress in science comes when experiments contradict theory." ~ Richard P. Feynman

"If you're doing an experiment, you should report everything that you think might make it invalid - not only what you think is right about it; other causes that could possibly explain your results; and things you thought of that you've eliminated by some other experiment, and how they worked -to make sure the other fellow can tell they have been eliminated." ~ Richard P. Feynman

"There are theoretical physicists who imagine, deduce, and guess at new laws, but do not experiment; and then there are experimental physicists who experiment, imagine, deduce, and guess." ~ Richard P. Feynman
The traditional paradigm of publishing papers in journals has been overtaken by communications technology in the same way rocket engineering has been overtaken by SpaceX's (Musk's) approach. Peer review is being used in lieu of replication attempts; this must stop. The zeitgeist of science needs to embrace the spirit of Feynmann’s philosophy by adopting the following practices:
  • All published physics papers should be visible in a common index of all the journals.
  • Journals should exist online and resemble a mashup of comment sections and open source software. The potentially huge number of comments might be manageable by sorting them by "likes " score. Papers might be "forked" in order to offer alternate explanations of the observations or propose follow-up experiments, scored like the comments.
  • All physics papers should fall into one of two categories: Theoretical or Experimental. This doesn’t preclude experimental physics papers from proposing hypotheses for why the experiment returned the results it did, or for future experiments.
  • Peer review should consist of proof reading for typos, flagging any terms whose use deviates from common understanding without justification, and ensuring the paper follows Feynmann’s charge for completeness and transparency as in the next to last quote above. That’s all. Journals should refuse to publish papers that fail the Feynmann test, or if they do publish it they should provide an explanation of why they chose to publish.
  • Paper authors now have to assert they have no conflicts of interests. They should also have to assert they have included everything relevant per Feynmann’s charge above. Authors who are found to have fudged or cheated in this requirement should go to the end of the line or be suspended / banned.
  • Papers that attempt replication of original results should have priority in publication over those that don’t.
  • Papers that fail replication should have priority over those that succeed.
  • Citations should be required to include the replication status of the cited paper, which itself should include number of replication experiments, number of successful replications, and number of failures.
The fundamental problem is most of the people writing the check (Congress, etc.) are not scientists nor versed in the scientific method. I think we've got to stop arguing whether something is correct or not, and start heavily criticizing papers that don't provide all of the data and processes used for the experiment (I'm looking at you, Dr. Mann and posse). Which implies lobbying for more experimental and "practical physics" funding and less for LIGO, the Standard Model, and other studies whose benefit, if realized at all, is far in the future. I mean, what has the Higgs Boson done for us lately? The irony is that further experiments of the Electric Universe model just might yield successful fusion reactors or leveraging the electromagnetic forces in plasma for space travel.
Time is what prevents everything from happening all at once.

Cargo
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Re: Harvard Physicist Discusses Sham Peer Review and Publication Process

Unread post by Cargo » Fri Aug 26, 2022 4:13 am

I'll just leave this here for safe keeping. :D
by Chris Black

Ghislaine Maxwell’s father and high-ranking Mossad agent, Ian Robert Maxwell, is the reason many scientific publications are pay walled today.

After World War 2, Maxwell used contacts in the Allied occupation authorities to go into business, becoming the British and US distributor for Springer Verlag, a publisher of scientific books.

As this venture expanded, he played a central and pivotal role in the remaking of academic publishing as a for-profit pay walled business that limited who had access to new literature. This gate-keeping model has put profit over knowledge for decades in a fashion tiresomely typical of his people.

Read more:

Article www.theguardian.com/science/2017/jun/27 ... or-science

Archive archive.is/Se2jO

Side note: because everything beyond the abstract is often pay walled (or, as with many publications on the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein and Ivermectin, at risk of being retracted for political reasons), I prefer to directly upload a .pdf of any study I reference.

Great podcast if you ever wondered about the origin of that $11k open access fee. Apparently this very profitable business (academic publishing) began with Robert Maxwell: Is the staggeringly profitable business of scientific publishing bad for science? t.co/HhnEtIHBQn

— Patrick Forde (@FordePatrick) May 6, 2022
interstellar filaments conducted electricity having currents as high as 10 thousand billion amperes
"You know not what. .. Perhaps you no longer trust your feelings,." Michael Clarage
"Charge separation prevents the collapse of stars." Wal Thornhill

BeAChooser
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Re: Harvard Physicist Discusses Sham Peer Review and Publication Process

Unread post by BeAChooser » Fri Aug 26, 2022 4:59 am

jackokie wrote: Mon Apr 25, 2022 7:09 pm ... snip ...
Couldn't have said it better. Good post.

jackokie
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Re: Harvard Physicist Discusses Sham Peer Review and Publication Process

Unread post by jackokie » Fri Aug 26, 2022 8:53 pm

Thank you, BAC.
Time is what prevents everything from happening all at once.

Cognizant_Jon
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Re: Harvard Physicist Discusses Sham Peer Review and Publication Process

Unread post by Cognizant_Jon » Sun Oct 09, 2022 6:11 pm

This is a rather enlightening conversation. Great...because the Mossad agent just happen to have a great idea (again ludicrously short-termed for profits), we are stonewalled in the modern era. This would explain why my very thin book of Hannes Alfven "Cosmic Plasma" costs $169.99...

Pardon the tangent..I don't like it when good science is paywalled; especially when the real science could be un-paywalled to do two things:
1) Reduce absurd costs to levels the average person can afford (like medical innovations).
2) Educate the public on how events, actions, and causes really occur (like electric universe).

I am a science guy at heart for events on this side of existence (before death). I use science as a lens to figure out spiritual events mainstream science can't figure out (like ball lightening in nature). The good news is I am seeing personally relevant evidence that certain spiritual concepts are being scientifically tested with intent to debunk first, before considering concepts like ghosts existing or causing events.

For example, If on a security camera, a door appears to open and close of its own accord, it would be wise to first check the windows or other causes of the room the main door is meant to close off. If the windows are opened and the outside wind cause enough air pressure to push open the main door (that may have a loose lock) without assistance, you have discovered a potential cause.

Or by opening another door of the same room, the change in air pressure may be enough to open the main door without windows being present, you may have discovered another potential cause. I know you guys (and gals) are science driven, but for those Americans on this forum, I have been watching "Ghost Hunters" on the Discovery+ streaming service which is hosted by The Atlantic Paranormal Society ("TAPS").

That team uses deductive logic to, in every single case, look for non-magical & non-spiritual causes primarily; this includes Electro-Magnetic Fields that can cause nausea, severe anxiety, paranoia, etc, if they are severe enough. Personal note: I have been medically and mentally affected by EMF overload when I was in the US military on deployment. My symptoms fit the cause, and I do realize the potential logic errors by saying such.

My intent was not to derail this conversation,I am just using personal examples to relate to how paywalling science could have devastating consequences medically, especially for understanding and clarity. Had I known the science of EMF overload, and my doctors had known the same at the time I was diagnosed, it would have been clear that the high EMF military environment would have directly caused my condition.

My own personal medical situation is why I despise paywalls when trying the learn the science necessary for my wellbeing. I don't like paywalls anymore than all of you do. I don't like the current expression of peer-review either. You can thank EU Theories and Wal Thornhill for me learning about that issue as well. To which, I am immeasurably grateful for pointing out such foolish errors on those controlling the narrative in science.

I am also thanking everyone that responded to this conversation thread, especially for the Feynman tests for better peer-review. My science involves looking for non-spiritual & non-magical causes primarily, and exhaust those options first if the result cannot be easily debunked.

Cargo
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Re: Harvard Physicist Discusses Sham Peer Review and Publication Process

Unread post by Cargo » Wed Dec 21, 2022 4:33 am

Adding for the record
The rise and fall of peer review
Why the greatest scientific experiment in history failed, and why that's a great thing
https://experimentalhistory.substack.co ... eer-review
interstellar filaments conducted electricity having currents as high as 10 thousand billion amperes
"You know not what. .. Perhaps you no longer trust your feelings,." Michael Clarage
"Charge separation prevents the collapse of stars." Wal Thornhill

jackokie
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Re: Harvard Physicist Discusses Sham Peer Review and Publication Process

Unread post by jackokie » Wed Dec 21, 2022 5:15 am

@Cargo Wow! Thank you for that link. A great article.
Time is what prevents everything from happening all at once.

BeAChooser
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Re: Harvard Physicist Discusses Sham Peer Review and Publication Process

Unread post by BeAChooser » Wed Dec 21, 2022 5:30 am

Yes, very interesting article!

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