This is not just about the pressure put on academics to publish, but it is a whole systemic rot, that is not even remotely living up to the “peer reviewed evidence” myth.
The whole idea of an intermediary authority for scientific publishing is a scam, and it corrupts people who want/need to be in the pyramid. The whole thing is ill-conceived, needs to be abolished, and a new thing should be put in its place. At some point someone said, “I can ditch all this and just publish research on my blog, then people will criticize and build upon that”. No publisher, no paywall, no problem. If we follow this example, all of these issues can disappear overnight. But the vast majority of professionals value their career more than anything else, including our tantamount tenets of what science communication should look like.
You might object that “intermediary authorities” and “peer review” are essential to prevent disinformation and conspiracy theories. Well, we are past this point aren’t we? Did this system prevent conspiracy theories and disinformation, hoaxes, and fraudsters this far? No, so how exactly will it prevent all of these terrible things in the future? If anything, building arguments in the open without paywalls might deter at least some of the conspiracy theorists that brandish paywalls as further evidence of cover-ups and secrecy, and ditching the horrible jargon and high-brow style might actually help the common sense of scientific arguments just shine, and combat the rising anti-intellectualism of right-wing conspiracy theorists.
Like, if you explain Elsevier’s etc business model to any lay person (Pay me money so that I let you publish to my super-selective journal and feed your vanity) they have the most funny reactions, because to anyone who is not conditioned to this absurdity, it just sounds like a pyramid scheme.
I don’t think that “intermediary authorities” and “peer review” are the problem here nor will they completely eliminate disinformation and conspiracy theories on the internet. Getting rid of them does not help at all with those goals though. The big problem with publishers ATM is the closed access and processes that go on.
IMO places like Open Science Journal and PLOS are vastly better and attempting to solve the issues with the current closed and restrictive publishing models.
Only thing I’d mention slightly counter to that is peer review - as a process - is still something I believe is useful.
That is, the process of people with relevant domain expertise critiquing methodology, findings etc. When its done right, it absolutely produces better results which everyone benefits from.
Where it fails is when cliques and ingroups are resistant to change on principle, which is ofc actually an anti-scientific stance. To put it another way, the best scientist wants to be proven wrong (or less correct) if that is indeed the truth.
It also fails, as you identify, when the corrupt rot of powerful publishers (who are merely leeches) gate-keep the potential for communicating alternate models.
It also fails where laypeople parrot popsci talking points without understanding that peer review is far from infallible. Even the best of the best journals still contain errors - any genuine scientist is the first to admit this. Meanwhile popsci enthusiast laypeople think that just because something was printed in any journal, that it must be unequivocally 100.000% truth, and are salivating at the opportunity to label any healthy dose of skepticism as “antiscience” or “conspiracy theorist” etc.
It also seems to fail when popsci headlines invariably don’t include the caveats all good scientists include with their findings etc.
Final point which I think would help enormously is its very very difficult to get funding or high worth publications in reproduction. The obsession with novelty is not only unhealthy, it’s unproductive.
Reproduction is vastly undervalued. Sadly its not easy to get funding or support for ‘merely’ reproducing recent results. There’s two reasons why this should change, firstly it will ofc help with the reproducibility crisis, and it will also afford upcomers excellent opportunities to sharpen their skills, and properly prepare for future ground-breaking work. To put another way, when reading a novel paper you think you understand it. Only when you take it to the lab do you truly understand.
As far as I know the peer reviewers are in most cases now selected by the editor, they self-select to respond, are not paid for their work, and the process for alarmingly many journals is not even blind. I always thought that this makes the process vulnerable to network effects in the field, since people are obliged to a certain etiquette when commenting on established figures in their own field. So yes, I get where you are coming from, but similar to the scientific method, peer review is also great to describe in theory, in practice it would require much more precise protocols, like Web protocols I might say. I really don’t want to be a pessimist about science in the current political climate, but if we want these great ideals (Scientific method, Peer Reviewed evidence) we will have to abandon the existing situation as soon as possible.
This is not just about the pressure put on academics to publish, but it is a whole systemic rot, that is not even remotely living up to the “peer reviewed evidence” myth.
The whole idea of an intermediary authority for scientific publishing is a scam, and it corrupts people who want/need to be in the pyramid. The whole thing is ill-conceived, needs to be abolished, and a new thing should be put in its place. At some point someone said, “I can ditch all this and just publish research on my blog, then people will criticize and build upon that”. No publisher, no paywall, no problem. If we follow this example, all of these issues can disappear overnight. But the vast majority of professionals value their career more than anything else, including our tantamount tenets of what science communication should look like.
You might object that “intermediary authorities” and “peer review” are essential to prevent disinformation and conspiracy theories. Well, we are past this point aren’t we? Did this system prevent conspiracy theories and disinformation, hoaxes, and fraudsters this far? No, so how exactly will it prevent all of these terrible things in the future? If anything, building arguments in the open without paywalls might deter at least some of the conspiracy theorists that brandish paywalls as further evidence of cover-ups and secrecy, and ditching the horrible jargon and high-brow style might actually help the common sense of scientific arguments just shine, and combat the rising anti-intellectualism of right-wing conspiracy theorists.
Like, if you explain Elsevier’s etc business model to any lay person (Pay me money so that I let you publish to my super-selective journal and feed your vanity) they have the most funny reactions, because to anyone who is not conditioned to this absurdity, it just sounds like a pyramid scheme.
I don’t think that “intermediary authorities” and “peer review” are the problem here nor will they completely eliminate disinformation and conspiracy theories on the internet. Getting rid of them does not help at all with those goals though. The big problem with publishers ATM is the closed access and processes that go on.
IMO places like Open Science Journal and PLOS are vastly better and attempting to solve the issues with the current closed and restrictive publishing models.
Perhaps we could benefit from sth like MetaCritic for science.
I generally agree. The system is utterly rotten.
Only thing I’d mention slightly counter to that is peer review - as a process - is still something I believe is useful.
That is, the process of people with relevant domain expertise critiquing methodology, findings etc. When its done right, it absolutely produces better results which everyone benefits from.
Where it fails is when cliques and ingroups are resistant to change on principle, which is ofc actually an anti-scientific stance. To put it another way, the best scientist wants to be proven wrong (or less correct) if that is indeed the truth.
It also fails, as you identify, when the corrupt rot of powerful publishers (who are merely leeches) gate-keep the potential for communicating alternate models.
It also fails where laypeople parrot popsci talking points without understanding that peer review is far from infallible. Even the best of the best journals still contain errors - any genuine scientist is the first to admit this. Meanwhile popsci enthusiast laypeople think that just because something was printed in any journal, that it must be unequivocally 100.000% truth, and are salivating at the opportunity to label any healthy dose of skepticism as “antiscience” or “conspiracy theorist” etc.
It also seems to fail when popsci headlines invariably don’t include the caveats all good scientists include with their findings etc.
Final point which I think would help enormously is its very very difficult to get funding or high worth publications in reproduction. The obsession with novelty is not only unhealthy, it’s unproductive.
Reproduction is vastly undervalued. Sadly its not easy to get funding or support for ‘merely’ reproducing recent results. There’s two reasons why this should change, firstly it will ofc help with the reproducibility crisis, and it will also afford upcomers excellent opportunities to sharpen their skills, and properly prepare for future ground-breaking work. To put another way, when reading a novel paper you think you understand it. Only when you take it to the lab do you truly understand.
As far as I know the peer reviewers are in most cases now selected by the editor, they self-select to respond, are not paid for their work, and the process for alarmingly many journals is not even blind. I always thought that this makes the process vulnerable to network effects in the field, since people are obliged to a certain etiquette when commenting on established figures in their own field. So yes, I get where you are coming from, but similar to the scientific method, peer review is also great to describe in theory, in practice it would require much more precise protocols, like Web protocols I might say. I really don’t want to be a pessimist about science in the current political climate, but if we want these great ideals (Scientific method, Peer Reviewed evidence) we will have to abandon the existing situation as soon as possible.
@whydudothatdrcrane Great analysis!