Peer Review Quotes

“A mathematician is an individual who calls himself a 'physicist' and does 'physics' and physical experiments with abstract concepts.”
― Bill Gaede, Why God Doesn't Exist

“A mathematician is an individual who believes that prophesying that his dog will die if he deprives it of food constitutes a prediction.”
― Bill Gaede

“In the 1920s, there was a dinner at which the physicist Robert W. Wood was asked to respond to a toast ... 'To physics and metaphysics.' Now by metaphysics was meant something like philosophy—truths that you could get to just by thinking about them. Wood took a second, glanced about him, and answered along these lines: The physicist has an idea, he said. The more he thinks it through, the more sense it makes to him. He goes to the scientific literature, and the more he reads, the more promising the idea seems. Thus prepared, he devises an experiment to test the idea. The experiment is painstaking. Many possibilities are eliminated or taken into account; the accuracy of the measurement is refined. At the end of all this work, the experiment is completed and ... the idea is shown to be worthless. The physicist then discards the idea, frees his mind (as I was saying a moment ago) from the clutter of error, and moves on to something else. The difference between physics and metaphysics, Wood concluded, is that the metaphysicist has no laboratory.”
― Carl Sagan

“Probably the greatest challenge to humanity is not climate change or global warming, but the misuse of the power of medical research.”
― Amit Ray, Compassionate Artificial Intelligence

“Proof' is the hallmark of religion.”
― Bill Gaede

“Why do we put up with it? Do we like to be criticized? No, no scientist enjoys it. Every scientist feels a proprietary affection for his or her ideas and findings. Even so, you don’t reply to critics, Wait a minute; this is a really good idea; I’m very fond of it; it’s done you no harm; please leave it alone. Instead, the hard but just rule is that if the ideas don’t work, you must throw them away.”
― Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark

“I think peer review is hindering science. In fact, I think it has become a completely corrupt system. It’s corrupt in many ways, in that scientists and academics have handed over to the editors of these journals the ability to make judgment on science and scientists. There are universities in America, and I’ve heard from many committees, that we won’t consider people’s publications in low impact factor journals.

Now I mean, people are trying to do something, but I think it’s not publish or perish, it’s publish in the okay places [or perish]. And this has assembled a most ridiculous group of people. I wrote a column for many years in the nineties, in a journal called Current Biology. In one article, “Hard Cases”, I campaigned against this [culture] because I think it is not only bad, it’s corrupt. In other words it puts the judgment in the hands of people who really have no reason to exercise judgment at all. And that’s all been done in the aid of commerce, because they are now giant organisations making money out of it.”
― Sydney Brenner

“It would be good if peer review actually worked, if it actually challenged and questioned what scientists write. Did you know that the Koran is peer reviewed by 100% of Muslims and always receives a 100% pass mark? Funny that! Who in their right mind would claim that peer review is an intrinsic good? Nobel laureate Max Planck said that science progressed funeral by funeral. So much for peer review. You actually need the peer reviewers to die before new ideas can be entertained! Peer reviewers are in fact the midwit, careerist paradigm enforcers. They shut down all new thinking.”
― David Sinclair, Universals Versus Particulars: The Ultimate Intellectual War

“College is the grinding machine of the Mathematical Establishment, a conveyor belt that takes individuals from one cookie cutter to another so that the product comes within tight control limits out of the assembly line.”
― Bill Gaede

“The literature [Nobel] laureate of this year has said that an author can do anything as long as his readers believe him.
A scientist cannot do anything that is not checked and rechecked by scientists of this network before it is accepted.”
― Sune Bergström

“Science itself is a quasi-religious faith, and is full of dogmas relating to its current paradigm, and any scientists who do not agree with the establishment are kicked out of science altogether – like heretics, freethinkers and blasphemers in religion.”
― Mike Hockney, The Sam Harris Delusion

“How can you say one thing when your data shows something else. One doesn't know what was on the authors' minds and maybe they interpreted things differently but the sense is that the literature maintains an attitude somewhat like the approach of lawyers. If the jury buys it, it doesn't matter whether or not it's true. In scientific publishing, the jury are the reviewers and the editors. If they are already convinced of the conclusion, if there is no voir dire, you will surely win the case.”
― Richard David Feinman, The World Turned Upside Down: The Second Low-Carbohydrate Revolution

“The main challenges for a reviewer in peer reviewing:
- Knowing the field to which a certain manuscript belongs very well.
- Having experience in reviewing manuscripts.
- Having abilities to make reviewer’s remarks clear.
- Having enough time to evaluate the manuscript in depth.
- Obeying the editorial deadline for doing a review.
- Having a strong interest in scholarly journals.
- Being fluent in English.”
― Eraldo Banovac

“The worst problem of peer reviewing is its time consuming nature.”
― Eraldo Banovac

“Reevaluate your abilities each time when you have been offered to review
an article. And say no thanks if the topic doesn’t belong to the field of your expertise.”
― Eraldo Banovac

“There were several key American scientists that favorably reported on Nazi eugenics after visiting Hitler's Germany in order to provide it cover.”
― A.E. Samaan, H.H. Laughlin: American Scientist, American Progressive, Nazi Collaborator

“This prejudice you started with now looks like legitimate knowledge that can go straight in the classroom. It can go straight to activists or policy makers. It's a real problem.”
― James A. Lindsay

“Always give more weight to peer-reviewed research than to results announced solely in the media.”
― Jonathan Garo Koomey, Turning Numbers into Knowledge: Mastering the Art of Problem Solving

“Given that most published research is flawed and non-reproducible, this is the most organized body of lies we believe in without much scrutiny.”
― Sayem Sarkar

“When we incentivize the publication of new research, it's no wonder that people will be publishing more and more flawed new research because they have families to take care of and bills to pay.”
― Sayem Sarkar