Purchasing Consensus: Peer Review and The Age of Dogmatism

Werner Karl Heisenberg - pioneer of quantum mechanics

The Age of Dogmatism

Empiricism has been lost in this age of dogmatism, where many seek validation from peer-review rather than from empirical evidence. The entire peer-review process is highly suspect, for it has largely become a process of purchasing consensus. Peer-review is only designed to show that a study is worthy of further investigation, nothing more.

It is evident that the peer-review process has become perverted by corporate interests. So often it is used to impose consensus on the "scientific" community at large rather than to promote further investigation. To purchase consensus by the "scientific" community, through the stamp of approval called "peer-review," is not science; it is the antithesis to science. Theory has largely replaced empirical evidence in much of what passes as science today. This is nothing more than dogmatic "science."

Dogmatic "science" has failed us and has produced arrogant demagogues, like Michio Kaku, Bill Nye and Neil deGrasse Tyson, who attempt to enforce their materialist worldview in the media through an appeal to authority, over and above physical evidence. What these demagogues say is taken as gospel and is used by materialist followers in their quest for confirmation bias.

Simply because a paper is peer-reviewed does not mean that the paper is conclusive nor that it has been validated. Peer-review is a low-grade process of filtering out bad papers, but it is certainly not infallible.

The Peer-Review Process is Flawed: The "CRAP" Paper

One pertinent example of fallibility in the peer-revew process is a paper submitted to The Open Information Science Journal by Philip Davis and Kent Anderson, entitled "Deconstructing Access Points." It was an intentionally senseless paper produced by a computer program called SCIgen. Davis and Anderson left a clue for the publishers as to the authenticity of the paper where they stated their institutional affiliation as the Center for Research in Applied Phrenology (CRAP).

As NewScientist.com reported:

"[Philip] Davis teamed up with Kent Anderson, a member of the publishing team at The New England Journal of Medicine, to put Bentham’s editorial standards to the test. The pair turned to SCIgen, a program that generates nonsensical computer science papers, and submitted the resulting paper to The Open Information Science Journal, published by Bentham.

The paper, entitled 'Deconstructing Access Points' made no sense whatsoever, as this sample reveals:
'In this section, we discuss existing research into red-black trees, vacuum tubes, and courseware [10]. On a similar note, recent work by Takahashi suggests a methodology for providing robust modalities, but does not offer an implementation [9].'"

The "CRAP" paper was accepted and published by Bentham Science Publishers' Open Information Science Journal, and while this does not completely invalidate the "peer-review" process, it does highlight the fallibility of "peer-review."

The Age of Empiricism

We must turn from this age of dogmatism to an age of empiricism. We must learn to conjoin all forms of knowledge, and find true empirical science again through its origins: interdisciplinary natural philosophy. We must stop relying upon theory as a basis for knowledge; no longer can we rely on theories where we should be relying on evidence. Evidence must come before theory.

Sources:

"CRAP" paper accepted by journal: https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn17288-crap-paper-accepted-by-journal/

SCIgen: https://pdos.csail.mit.edu/archive/scigen/

Deconstructing Access Points (pdf) - Confluence - Cornell University: https://confluence.cornell.edu/download/attachments/2523490/Access+Points.pdf