Helpful insights! The Ultimate Goal of The Expertocracy seems apparent by now: to serve as the Sanhedrin of the ruling secular bureaucracy, its repository of cultural wisdom, its determinant of scientific orthodoxy and political orthopraxy, and its final authority on the law, so as to empower The Expertocracy to advise or command everyone anywhere how to do all things. (A Bill Gates-funded, WHO-promoted podcast of Tedros Ghebreyesus demonstrating proper toilet paper manipulation as a way to mitigate climate change is not unimaginable. Should you, dear Briggs, come across such a Butt-Wiping video, please do not share. Your Hand-Washing How-To today was more than enough, as in "Too much is enough.") Whether it was invented by a malign committee of astute self-seekers or it's the spontaneously emergent monster of bureaucratic evolution, peer review is a disingenuous, deceptive device; it principally serves the insider interests and PR purposes of members of The Expertocracy. It creates the false illusion that The Expertocracy is not what it is, a top-down hierarchical structure run by ologopolists, but is actually democratic and egalitarian, run from the botom up. And peer review also creates the false illusion that The Expertocracy's social and scientific projects are the consequence of rigorously-enforced protocols of intellectual objectivity and cultural neutrality, while masking the role in its significant efforts of subjectivity, partiality, careerism, racial bias, wokeism, sexism, graft and political influence.
Peer review as practiced is a social evil foisted on the public by The Expertocracy, which deploys it to enhance their power by suppressing dissent, enforcing conformity, blocking competition, stifling intellectual progress, and abetting insider dealing. It injures the common good and should be outlawed wherever government funds are used and scorned everywhere else.
The major journals and institutions will NEVER forego peer review. Would state bar associations agree to uniform national licensing of lawyers? Of course not, when maintaining such barriers to entry restricts supply and keeps fees high.
But open forums of internet publication can chip away at the power of peer review. No other way out, really.
Procedures are the ways in which control is achieved.
Can't address "the institutional control of science that is at issue" unless one addresses the procedures, like peer review, that are deployed to achieve and maintain that institutional control.
1) Wiki is criticized as lacking intellectual integrity b/c its editors discrminate against those who offer facts or opinions contrary to Wiki's biases. That crtiticism of bias may well impair Wiki's popularity, and wki has no defense except merely denyng that it is biased and censors contrary opinions and facts. Newspapers in US faced such massive criticisms of this nature in the 18th-20th centuries and TV news faced it in the mid-late 20th century that they were forced to defend themselves by appointing independent editorial boards and by separating/insulating their news divisions from the rest of their corporate structure. Info tech platforms defended themselves against the same criticisms by setting up so-called Objective standards of censorship and then punishing online writers/speakers for violating these so-called standards. When the public came to see that these "insulation" and "objective standards" defenses were BS and a sham, the news media and the info tech platforms came up with the idea of "Fact checkers" in order to justify their bias and censorship. Of course, that tactic is now widely seen for what it was, a sham.
Journals use peer review in much the same way, as a screen to mask their bias and censorship.
We need to remove the screen if we are to expose the bias. To pursue your logic, it is not possible to disarm an enemy institution without taking away its weapons. Peer review is the principal weapon by which the major journals attack their political enemies and defend themselves against the criticism that they are ideological and biased against the right. These journals are immune from change so long as they can wield the sword and shield of peer review.
No way am I watching that on a Monday. No need to ruin my week until Thursday or so.
https://www.theepochtimes.com/major-scientific-publisher-retracting-over-500-papers_4768649.html?utm_source=Morningbrief&src_src=Morningbrief&utm_campaign=mb-2022-10-03&src_cmp=mb-2022-10-03&utm_medium=email&est=utbeNZk7TAOfaUolLCgqE35RVX45x2V%2FLPks%2Fo00QQh1fdvifIQDQV3oCo0%3D
Helpful insights! The Ultimate Goal of The Expertocracy seems apparent by now: to serve as the Sanhedrin of the ruling secular bureaucracy, its repository of cultural wisdom, its determinant of scientific orthodoxy and political orthopraxy, and its final authority on the law, so as to empower The Expertocracy to advise or command everyone anywhere how to do all things. (A Bill Gates-funded, WHO-promoted podcast of Tedros Ghebreyesus demonstrating proper toilet paper manipulation as a way to mitigate climate change is not unimaginable. Should you, dear Briggs, come across such a Butt-Wiping video, please do not share. Your Hand-Washing How-To today was more than enough, as in "Too much is enough.") Whether it was invented by a malign committee of astute self-seekers or it's the spontaneously emergent monster of bureaucratic evolution, peer review is a disingenuous, deceptive device; it principally serves the insider interests and PR purposes of members of The Expertocracy. It creates the false illusion that The Expertocracy is not what it is, a top-down hierarchical structure run by ologopolists, but is actually democratic and egalitarian, run from the botom up. And peer review also creates the false illusion that The Expertocracy's social and scientific projects are the consequence of rigorously-enforced protocols of intellectual objectivity and cultural neutrality, while masking the role in its significant efforts of subjectivity, partiality, careerism, racial bias, wokeism, sexism, graft and political influence.
Peer review as practiced is a social evil foisted on the public by The Expertocracy, which deploys it to enhance their power by suppressing dissent, enforcing conformity, blocking competition, stifling intellectual progress, and abetting insider dealing. It injures the common good and should be outlawed wherever government funds are used and scorned everywhere else.
The major journals and institutions will NEVER forego peer review. Would state bar associations agree to uniform national licensing of lawyers? Of course not, when maintaining such barriers to entry restricts supply and keeps fees high.
But open forums of internet publication can chip away at the power of peer review. No other way out, really.
Procedures are the ways in which control is achieved.
Can't address "the institutional control of science that is at issue" unless one addresses the procedures, like peer review, that are deployed to achieve and maintain that institutional control.
1) Wiki is criticized as lacking intellectual integrity b/c its editors discrminate against those who offer facts or opinions contrary to Wiki's biases. That crtiticism of bias may well impair Wiki's popularity, and wki has no defense except merely denyng that it is biased and censors contrary opinions and facts. Newspapers in US faced such massive criticisms of this nature in the 18th-20th centuries and TV news faced it in the mid-late 20th century that they were forced to defend themselves by appointing independent editorial boards and by separating/insulating their news divisions from the rest of their corporate structure. Info tech platforms defended themselves against the same criticisms by setting up so-called Objective standards of censorship and then punishing online writers/speakers for violating these so-called standards. When the public came to see that these "insulation" and "objective standards" defenses were BS and a sham, the news media and the info tech platforms came up with the idea of "Fact checkers" in order to justify their bias and censorship. Of course, that tactic is now widely seen for what it was, a sham.
Journals use peer review in much the same way, as a screen to mask their bias and censorship.
We need to remove the screen if we are to expose the bias. To pursue your logic, it is not possible to disarm an enemy institution without taking away its weapons. Peer review is the principal weapon by which the major journals attack their political enemies and defend themselves against the criticism that they are ideological and biased against the right. These journals are immune from change so long as they can wield the sword and shield of peer review.