The Ugly Truth About Peer Review

Is peer review actually holding back scientific progress?

According to my good friend and mathematical maverick Eric Weinstein, it might be. He argues that the traditional peer review system does more harm than good, especially in fields like physics, where innovation is everything.

In this clip, I explore Eric’s controversial stance, trace the history of peer review, and share my own perspective. Enjoy!

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[DrBrianKeating]

Who’s right about peer review, me or Eric? And if you have a .edu email address and live in the USA, you’re guaranteed to win a real meteorite 💥 Just join my mailing list here 👉 briankeating.com/edu

[BB-cfgx]

On the leading bleeding edge of science, who are the peers?

[kricketflyd]

Peer review is why the pyramids in Egypt are 4, 500 years old and called tombs.

[charlesgibson]

What happened to peer review with covid-19?

[IamdeaththedestroyerofWorlds]

Why don’t you bring Eric to Debate this?

[georgelet]

Nothing is more ugly and bogus than peer review when it comes to climate change.

[Bryan-ctbx]

Brian is Batman. He NEEDS The Joker (Eric)
They make each other better.
For better or worse.

[Bern]

So much energy and bitterness is wasted over what is essentially "inside baseball."

[aboycalledjohn]

Peer review is great - if you are doing something that the crowd agrees with. The gate-keeping effect of peer review is a recipe for stagnation in science. If you want conformity rather than progress, then peer review is the way to go.

[RWin-fpjn]

Einstein famously said: “we cant fix our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them”. In that sense peer review has an inherent, and ever narrowing, ability to let a truely novel theory through. In so far peer review specifically holds back GU, I dont think thats the case. Like string theory, GU hasnt clearly gotten the true problem to fix, hence cannot be the answer. Our shared set of accepted theories is a Jenga tower. Both GU and string theory are quarreling about the best way to design the tenth layer, hoping to give it back stability. But the instability is already caused by the erroneuous first layer, created by Einstein 100 years ago. There is NOTHING any additional theory can do to correct that. Eric doesnt see it. Penrose does to some extend. We need to go back and correct what was (intentionally?) dislodged by Einstein (or what Einstein was instructed).

[johnwillis]

Careful Brian, do you want to be the one who's "out of control" next??
😂😂😂

[BlackHoleForge]

I applaud you for disagreeing with somebody without any of the negative stereotypes or name calling. I appreciate that you take the time to explain your point of view without putting him down. This is how a debate should be done.

[peterweston]

I suspect the truths of peer review across the board lie somewhere between Brian’s and Eric’s views.
Here’s an example of a subverted review process. If you work in a small area of science research, the chances are your paper will be ‘blind’ reviewed by someone who can tell who you are by the work you have submitted. Indeed the peer may be competing for funds with you as they work in the same area. If that reviewer is less scrupulous they may put pressure on you to conduct a series of additional plausible but low value experiments to slow you down. Poor editorial judgement may conspire to align the editor with the reviewer.
For a rigorous analysis check out Stuart Richie’s book Science Fictions .

[MitzvosGolem]

Peers review Peers who review peers ideas.

No bias ?

Eric has a point in some ways .

Quantum Mechanics was initially ridiculed by peers .
So was germ theory of disease .

Look up Ignaz Siemelweiss and Joseph Lister, Jenner etc .
Often in history the majority of the intellectual establishment was wrong .
And blocked progress.

[electrodacus]

Any theory that can not make testable predictions is useless and nobody should waste the time to try and review that.
I must agree with Eric in the fact that peer review has mush more weight than it should have.
There is to much of an incentive to publish papers so much that most papers are just a waste of time diluting the valuable information.
Maybe LLM's will be able to sort trough all that useless info and get the gold to the surface.

[occhams]

In my experience, the problem with peer review was the 'freakonomics' issue. By analogy, sumo wrestlers need 10 wins in a row to become grand sumo.. The chance of a sumo losing his 10th match is basically zero. No sumo is going to skunk another at that point because it might be done to them. Its a feedback loop that basically rewards the in-crowd. In a particular field, there may only be 10 - 20 researchers. None of them are likely to skuttle another researcher - they ALL need money, not enemies. That limits critique.

[geraldwelch]

But I see his point. I've been working on my theory of Inverse Gravity for almost fifteen years. Once I had it "ready" last year, the gatekeeping that has been set up by peer review has been an unsurmountable wall. If you don't know someone, you're not getting in. So he is right in the aspect that any layperson is more likely to give up after a couple of years of sending proposals and not even receiving rejections.

[BRunoAWAY]

For me, brazillian, the peer review is a mess, because lots of universitys here only value anglo-saxon hyped jornals, I actually want to publish on local journals, because if we dont do it, our science will never grow

[CrucialFlowResearch]

Did brian keatimg just say he should get more funding to retract his fraudulent bicep research? 16:06 he also literally says he needs funding to be ethical. Wow. He can't just be ethical, he needs extra funding for that too 😂

[carminelombardi]

we don't need to be a Physicist, to understand, "The more we know, the less we know".