I’ve repeatedly heard the criticism that none of the research that’s come out of The Wolfram Physics Project has been peer reviewed.

It’s true that Stephen Wolfram has, very deliberately, circumvented the peer review process, publishing many thousands of pages of articles and books, and many hundreds of hours of podcasts and videos, without asking anyone’s permission.

But in my mind, that’s a good thing.

Peer review is suffocating science.

It encourages incremental improvements on tired, old theories, while discouraging bold, new ideas.

And I’m not the only one who thinks so. In his splendid article The rise and fall of peer review, Adam Mastroianni describes peer review as an experiment... an experiment that has failed.

If we want to reverse the stagnation of science over the last 50 years, and give new paradigms like Wolfram Physics a chance, then we’ve got to get rid of peer review.

Let me know what you think!

Mark

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