Is There a Small Sea Conservative Bias in Peer Review?

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There's a real reason to think that um there's a kind of small sea conservative bias in peer review precisely because and this is so to speak inevitable like whenever we assess a new idea we're assessing it in light of what we already know. The problem is is you're preventing other people from being able to engage in that practice unless a relatively small number of people say that it meets their standards, he says. "On net this is just a disadvantageous procedure"

Everybody talks about the truth, but nobody does anything about it. And to be honest, how we talk about truth — what it is, and how to get there — can be a little sloppy at times. Philosophy to the rescue! I had a very ambitious conversation with Liam Kofi Bright, starting with what we mean by “truth” (correspondence, coherence, pragmatist, and deflationary approaches), and then getting into the nitty-gritty of how we actually discover it. There’s a lot to think about once we take a hard look at how science gets done, how discoveries are communicated, and what different kinds of participants can bring to the table.

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Liam Kofi Bright received his Ph.D. in Logic, Computation and Methodology from Carnegie Mellon University. He is currently on the faculty of the London School of Economics in the Department of Philosophy, Logic, and the Scientific Method. He has worked on questions concerning peer review and fraud in scientific communities, intersectionality, logical empiricism, and Africana philosophy. He is well-known on Twitter as the Last Positivist.

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