F34PPP #4: Is Peer Review Peerless? Philip Moriarty School of Physics & Astronomy philip.moriarty@nottingham.ac.uk www.nottingham.ac.uk/physics/research/nano

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Last time… Francis Bacon and inductivism Hume The uniformity of Nature Popper and Falsification

Today More on Popper When peer review fails …and what we should do about it.

Popper and Falsification Bacon/ induction Popper

Popper and Falsification But this is not how lots of science (including physics!) is done. We very often don’t start with a theory. X The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not Eureka!, but rather, “hmm…that’s funny” Issac Asimov

More problems with Popper How do we know we’ve falsified a theory? Could our experimental measurement/observation be flawed?

http://www.dcscience.net/Colquhoun-1960.pdf READ THIS!

So this means that peer review is really good at sifting the wheat from the chaff, right?

“In the second paragraph I declare, without the slightest evidence or argument, that ``physical `reality' [note the scare quotes] ... is at bottom a social and linguistic construct.'' Not our theories of physical reality, mind you, but the reality itself. Fair enough: anyone who believes that the laws of physics are mere social conventions is invited to try transgressing those conventions from the windows of my apartment. (I live on the twenty-first floor.)”

“In short, my concern over the spread of subjectivist thinking is both intellectual and political. Intellectually, the problem with such doctrines is that they are false (when not simply meaningless). There is a real world; its properties are not merely social constructions; facts and evidence do matter. What sane person would contend otherwise? And yet, much contemporary academic theorizing consists precisely of attempts to blur these obvious truths -- the utter absurdity of it all being concealed through obscure and pretentious language.”

But let’s not get too smug just yet….

The Bogdanov Affair “So no one in the String Group at Harvard” can tell if these papers are real or fraudulent. This morning…told that they were frauds, everyone was laughing at how obvious it is. This afternoon, told that they are real professors and that this is not fraud, everyone here says, well, maybe it is real stuff…” Quoted in “Not Even Wrong”, Peter Woit

The unsettling Schön case http://archiv.ethlife.ethz.ch/images/scientificfraud-l.jpg

Nano ‘chopsticks’…

…or painfully poor Photoshopping?

So how do we fix peer review?