You know peer review, right?

It’s the way academics check each other’s research papers.

It ensures that only the good ones are published and prevents the bad ones from getting through.

Right?

Wrong.

Peer review does precisely the opposite of what you think it does.

It prevents the good papers from being published, and ensures that only the bad ones get through.

Peer review is suffocating science.

If we want to reverse the stagnation of science over the last 50 years, then we’ve got to get rid of peer review.

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I highly recommend you read Adam Mastroianni’s splendid article The rise and fall of peer review

I first heard Adam’s ideas about peer review in his conversation Adam Mastroianni on Peer Review and the Academic Kitchen with Russ Roberts on EconTalk

Why has there been no progress in physics since 1973?

• article
• audio
• video

Scientific papers:

• The journal Nature began to require peer review in 1973
• Millions of academic articles are published every year
• Some scientists simply make stuff up
• Fraudulent studies make it into respectable journals like Science, Nature and The Lancet

Physicists:

• Isaac Newton
• Albert Einstein’s four papers published in 1905
• Max Planck’s principle that science progresses one funeral at a time

The Wolfram Physics Project:

• Stephen Wolfram
• Jonathan Gorard

My projects:

• The Last Theory
• Open Web Mind

Image of Adam Mastroianni by permission from Adam Mastroianni

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The Last Theory is hosted by Mark Jeffery, founder of Open Web Mind