Open Peer Review to Save the World by Philip Gibbs

Dear Philip,

Thanks for submitting your well-written, and well-thought-out essay. I especially appreciated your list of biases. Have you ever considered coding any of these biases or other logical fallacies into RDF/OWL? My hope is that such a system would detect articles with excessive bias and logical error (and save me the trouble of reading them). The Semantic Web will help enhance our thinking (and reduce our biases) in other areas (e.g. law, medicine), not just scientific discovery, is one of the Three Crucial Technologies ) that I mention in my essay (feel free to critique it).

I do wonder if the "IKEA effect" has more to it than just bias. As Richard Feynman said, "What I cannot create, I do not understand." OK, IKEA uses low-strength particle board instead of wood, but their design engineering and supply chain methods are fantastic.

You say that we are illogical because of bias, but then you don't ask the next question. What is the evolutionary advantage of bias in thought? Maybe I should leave it as an exercise for the reader, but the short answer is, "Because for a large enough percentage of the time, it works." Those of our ancestors who did not employ bias in their reason died before they could become our ancestors.

I understand that the current publishing system could use some improvement, and I appreciate your hard work in establishing a more open publishing venue. But, not being an academic (and most of the world are not academics) I'm not sure that it really matters. People who reify scientific ideas into products (like Steve Jobs), or people who incentivize (or disincentivize) socially beneficial work (like the governments who make the laws of a democratic capitalist country) matter a lot more than we do. And while it is humbling for us scientists and engineers, it turns out that most discoveries usually pop up in more than once place near the same time. We really don't matter that much. :-(

You mentioned the importance and desirability of "carefully considered logic." Well, yes, and I do call for it in my essay, but we must remember that logic has it's limits (as proven by Godel, and recognized by anyone who has done any work with Descriptive Logics that do inferences over Semantic Web data. The upshot is that knowledge is not enough. Even wisdom may not be enough, if you don't have the advanced nanotechnology needed to feed the hungry (and heal the obese) without overloading our ecosystem. And even advanced nanotechnology can't save us from large K/T asteroids, nuclear war, and the like--for that we need a space-faring civilization.

Fixing the peer review of today's journal publishing system would be a good thing, but it won't save the world.

@Laurence

"...defects in the process of acquisition of new knowledge" "ephasizes that deficiencies in implementation are at the present time more serious than problems with the acquisition of knowledge"

So perhaps broad development in skills related to Common Sense coupled with an Open Peer Review forum with related Business Incubation may be a stronger solution.

Common Sense = Self-esteem (shared social group skills) logic predicting consequences

The skills of predicting consequences within the complexities of skills shared by a social group (physicists for instance) seems to be an act of developing new relationships to support new applications.

Open Peer Review with Business Incubation has the potential of creating new sustainable outcomes.

I completely agree that the time has come for open peer review, Philip. The system we have is ridiculous and counterproductive. I do wonder whether some expert curation is important to make sure the best papers emerge from the general noise, but I largely agree with everything you say.

While I think open peer review is an excellent idea, I'm not sure it's enough to save the world. It would certainly help, for example, if we understood the global climate better than we do. But I don't think better science will convince climate change deniers that we need to take more action. I'm afraid that our hardest problems may not be scientific, but political; that they may be driven by conflict over ends and interests that scientific research alone cannot resolve.

Best,

Rober de Neufville

Robert de Neufville

@Tihamer @Robert @Philip

Would you like to collaborate on implementing an Actual system, and not just engage in mental exercise? These essay submissions are unimportant unless acted upon.

From my perspective, you each are talking about different parts of the same system.

1) broad and diverse open forum limited to unrestricted research

2) software automation to make phases of development obvious and provide supporting tools to grow each phase of development

3) motivational structures built into the system to drive development into implementation

4) crowd-sourcing tools made available to fund phases of development. This is especially interesting because then after seeding an NSF proposal it can evolve in parallel diverse directions to seed other developments not ever first considered in the original NSF proposal. So NSF would become a one of the many crowd-sourcing funding agencies.

5) Training tools for skills can be made available to everyone to acquire social group related skills. Where each development project that evolves within the open peer review forum involves diverse specialties. To share communication skills with the group each person will need to familiarize themselves with the jargon and rudimentary relationships that are common to each participant. These related skills can be made available via online courses (many of which are currently free).

6) A system of equitable participation is developed to track the total involvement and contributions of each peer development group that evolves from the open peer review group. In this way when monetary gains occur, each person can be equitably be compensated.

7) .........

http://jamesbdunn2.blogspot.com/2014/05/open-peer-review-to-support-synergy-of.html

I can go on, but I hope this is enough information to create a perspective of an open online tool where open peer review transitions into open peer development.

Tihamer's concepts for supporting his three points of steering the future involved rhetoric (the expert use of language) to define perspectives of commonly relatable situations that resulted in:

1. Develop physical tools that give atomically precise control over bulk matter,

2. Multiply the size, diversity, and hardiness of Earth's biosphere (by transplanting it elsewhere),

3. Develop tools that help us think better.

I myself have attempted to do mind mappings for all of these. I'm guessing I'm not unique. So why aren't we doing something about it together?

Robert, you seem to be relating how a person's political connections and influences (i.e. perspectives and relationships) drive the support systems for any development. Political tools are built in applying the same structural foundations but different environment of applications for common sense.

Common Sense = Self-esteem (sharing of social group skills) logic predicting consequences

So politics is based in understanding and applying emotional skills logically connected to social skills, to manipulate broad systems of human efforts toward a desired set of outcomes.

Nothing we know is absolute, except for one thing; "Something Exists". Everything else is built from relative systems of perspectives and supporting relationships. We cannot see or perceive everything relative to a perspective, so sometimes other unseen influences become dominant and our perspective no longer is completely valid.

I challenge you to find one perspective other than "Something Exists" that is Absolutely True always in every time frame and every dimensional consideration. If you do, then you have found a characteristic of quantum causality.

Our brains live in what others outside this forum would consider an illusion. We use repeatable observations that result from identified consequences that provide a higher probability of success than random. Bias is based in broad perceived likelihood for success relative to the total systems of involved with a consideration.

So no two people are going to share the same biases.

The Open Peer Review process inclusive of other areas is important.

Expertise in one area of consideration can be almost completely unrelated to another perspective being considered.

Open Peer Review that causes people of like interests to mutually develop common skills to share in a development has the potential to drive broad economic developments, that fund ever growing numbers of significant developments that we currently cannot fund with our present system of peer review.

What do you think? Productive collaboration?

You can contact me at the below url so you do not expose your email address to spam harvesters.

http://www.ua-kits.com/frontpage/index.php/contact-us/

Oh, I inadvertently repeated myself - and thanks for answering my original statement of the same issues (more elaborately here, but no big deal.) Keep up the good work.

Hi Philip,

I love your article and gave it the "10" it deserves. You've brought a lot of vital concepts to the fore, and I hope that you win the contest because of it. I hope that open peer review becomes standard practice someday, for so many reasons, and because it really could save the world. All the best!

Warmly,

Aaron

Dear Philip

Your essay is well written and organized. Your topic is well developed and controversial. Overall, I agree with some of parts of your essay, I just would like to express a couple of disagreements.

First, I do not think changing the peer-review process is an important factor that will steer the future. High quality research will always prevail over bad quality research no matter what judging process we adopt. Bias and subjective opinions are intrinsic human characteristics that cannot be eliminated. We see this everywhere.

Second, I think that the present peer-review system is the most solid. Science has a reputation gained over some centuries and it will not jeopardize it by changing its peer-review process. Your proposal, specially principle 3) will reduce the quality of research. And we see this in your repository. On average the quality of research published in vixra is inferior when compared to that one published in arxiv. Arxiv's policies (such as endorsement) guarantee a minimum of quality in research because most people are experts in their fields. Manuscripts that do not meet the minimum quality standards should be rejected. By contrast, in vixra, one can find many articles with very poor quality. In my opinion this is the reason vixra is not well seen in the academy. This is something I regret you do not discuss in your essay.

Likewise, traditional journals vs open-access journals. The average quality of research published in traditional journals is far superior than that one published in open-access journals where as long as you pay the publication fee, your manuscript will be published even without a peer-review process. In my opinion open-access journals has gained a negative reputation due to their unethical practices. If these practices continue, my prediction is that they will all disappear by the end of the decade.

Also regarding your third principle, if I do research in a field, I would like to be criticized by someone who knows about that topic but not by a layman who doesn't know the rudiments. Just in the same way, I would not criticize a musician for playing an instrument that I do not even know how to play. One can only criticize something if one has enough knowledge about it.

Exams are filters to select the best for a given activity. It is not a method of suppression. What you call suppression, I would call it filtering in favor of higher quality in research.

You: Wikipedia is a good example of a system that allows anyone to contribute.

I wish this were true...

Anyway. I would like to take this opportunity to invite you to read and comment on my thread.

Best Regards

Israel

Philip,

It seems a lot of these entries are about method. Peer review, voting, enhancing education, frame of mind, framing the question etc. A lot also take a very science oriented and futuristic perspective. My problem with all this is that it doesn't necessarily deal directly with the actual issues involved, for the very basic reason that the real problems facing us do elicit a great deal of emotion, we all have varying points of view on many of them and there is no objective perspective to which we have access. The fact is that when we do try to materially change complex situations, the result isn't necessarily better, both because there are no clear objectives and often various people are working more for their own good, than the larger community. As W.B. Yeats put it, "The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity."

Now I am an avid reader of the news and commentary for many years and I do feel a pressing issue about how the world is run, is that in order for a functioning economy to work, it needs a fairly neutral medium of exchange, a monetary playing field, so to speak, yet what we have is one which functions are the major player in the economy, to the extent that the primary economic function has now become to produce these units of exchange. The function of capitalism has become to produce capital. As it serves to pull this notational value out of every possible source, it creates a siphon effect, that must further extract real value out of all aspects of life, from social and civil relations, to the environment.

My argument is that while we have come to think of money as a commodity, it is in fact a contract and if we were to begin to understand it in this context, it would change the essential economic paradigm.

For one thing, if people realized they no more owned those pieces of paper in their pockets, then they owned the section of road they happened to be traveling on, there would be much less incentive to draw value out of society and the environment, in order to acquire these notational promises. Such that then we would begin to see society and the environment as legitimate stores of value and not just as resources to be mined. Then people wouldn't need to save as much for needs such as elder and youth care, primary education and many of those other needs which historically were social functions in the first place. Even forms of local currencies could grow around many of these needs and keep the value within the community and not have it skimmed off by international banks.

With the current financial system, risk is public and reward is privatized, yet the greed of those managing this system is serving to rapidly cook their own golden goose. As I see it, this will open up a significant opportunity for change, given that the solution to all the prior breakdowns in the system, with the government creating ever looser credit and buying the debt to do so, will eventually create a mess too big to paper over.

So this presents both goal and opportunity. How would you judge it as a method for steering humanity, in your peer review system?

Regards,

John Merryman

As usual, I'm logged out by the time I post.

Causally, everything is a set of interconnected systems of perspectives that are formed from interrelated relationships. So nothing is an isolated perspective, they tend to bleed together and overlap. Especially when "choosing" to isolate some usually non-dominant influences to make the perspective easier to monitor and manipulate.

I do not believe Phil's cited relationships will guide humanity into the future solely on their own merits. But I think they are important as part of a larger effort.

For all of the essays here, none of them are sufficient on their own to guide the future of humanity. However, "collectively" I see where many of the concepts can be fit together to form a larger actionable effort that indeed could guide the future of humanity relative to broad technological developments.

Do you really want to Steer the Future of Humanity and take action today?

Force the NSA to be managed ethically.

Maximize Freedoms and at the same time Maximize Security, do not give up one to have the other. Corruption uses the shifting of Security policies to unethically and illegally allocate resources and/or opportunities.

I know a little about the NSA and there is a lot of internal turmoil right now and a great deal of pressure from Representatives; some of which is promoting the release of information to Corporate controlled entities for what THOSE Representatives consider ethical oversight; i.e. promoting Corruption and acting in the interests of Treason.

This will hinder broad economic development because dominant corporations will further dominate significant opportunities. This translates to a suffering research budget.

Treason defined as "intentional weakening of security" for the unethical/illegal allocation of resources/opportunities

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retweet: Part of Civil Rights is that Representation is free of Rep/Dem Treason http://tinyurl.com/lpqsur5

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Write Reps & NSA, rare opportunity right now to force NSA to monitor and publicly report all acts of corruption/treason

Dear Philip

Thanks for your reply. In my view, your repository has created itself a deplorable reputation over the years thanks to its policies specially those related to the quality of the material published there. As I said, low and high quality research can be identified only by experts no matter the judging process. To me it is bias to say that vixra has been suppressed when, in fact, publications in vixra don't meet the minimum quality standards.

If you would like vixra to be cited and accepted by research institutions and reputable journals, you would have to solve the quality issue. In order to do this, you would have to implement filters similar to arxiv. But since vixra was created for EVERYONE (expert or not), I don't see how vixra will achieve this.

You: This is why the peer-review system has to be more efficient and reliable.

Current peer-review is ok despite its cons. For the reasons given in my previous post, I do not think your proposal will help to improve it.

You: It is no good discovering that a drug does not work after it has been sold to millions of people.

I think it is not wise to blame a reviewer or journal, and therefore, the peer-review system, for a drug that does not work.

You: I think you have missed the point about how viXra works and the principles it uses.

I know vixra very well.

You: The point is that anyone should be able to have a say.

No, not anyone but only qualified and recognized people, experts in a given field. If "anyone" would like to have a say, anyone would have to meet the minimum quality requirements. That's why there are institutions and research centers where people acquire the minimum requirements to have a say.

Good luck in the contest!

Best Regards

Israel

Israel, there are a lot of people who say the same things as you but it is because they have failed to see how the now paradigm for publications works. Anyone can publish now, on a blog or an e-book or whatever. It is not possible to filter out low quality material as journals used to do in the past. I see this as a good thing because in the past a lot of good papers were delayed or hidden by the old system. It does not do harm that bad papers can be read by the public. The harm comes when people wrongly judge a good paper to be bad or a bad paper to be good. That is the business for peer-review to sort out.

viXra does not try to build a reputation for quality. It never has and it never will. This is written on the web site in several places and I have lost count of the number of times I have said it in response to this kind of criticism. You cannot judge any paper on viXra merely by the fact that that is where it is, because viXra is open to anything (except documents that are off-topic and where legal issues intervene) People are gradually starting to understand this and the quantity of papers we receive is rising at about 40% per year. I do not monitor quality but my general impression is that the ratio of useful science to junk on viXra is also increasing. People still sometimes try to mock us by pointing to low quality papers they find there but that is because they are behind the wave and have not yet got the idea of how to surf it.

viXra works on the principle that publication is completely separate from peer-review. The traditional system says otherwise but that is the old dogma and the new publication paradigm usurps it. Some people will never get the new way but more are waking up to it. viXra is just one small part of the change that is happening. The bigger picture is open peer-review which is now following on the tail of open access publication.

It is difficult to gauge how many people are coming over to the new concept but there are signs that lots of people are. Your old idea that people need to have qualifications to have a say is a dying one. The UK government has offered a £10 million prize to anyone who can make progress on a problem that threatens humanity (climate change, resistant bugs etc) They have asked the public to decide what issue to tackle and are encouraging anyone to compete for the prize, whether academic, corporation or just independent scientist/inventor, it does not matter. Some people say that this is the wrong approach but they are doing it because other public prizes have already worked and they want to see how far the idea can be taken.

Of course expertise and qualifications will always be important for research but you also have to count the paths that do not follow the classical route, as in Douglas Singleton's path integral metaphor.

Some new experiments in publication do try to restrict their input to academics. I think those are the systems that will ultimately fail, not the open repositories like viXra. Philica is already sinking because it tried to set a minimum quality standard for submission and failed. I think arXiv will ultimately find that its filter is its biggest limitation. Microsoft's Academic search also failed miserably because they restricted its scope too much. Google scholar does better because they accept papers from almost anywhere. They bowed to pressure from academics to filter out viXra but as our scope grows they will either have to change that or they will suffer for the omission. Figshare has no filter and is doing very well. viXra is boomimg despite actively setting itself up as the place for arXiv rejects and encouraging anyone to submit. A filter is not a prerequisite for success. Journals used to be open to anyone but now they are quietly starting to filter out submissions from academic outsiders without even reading the papers. They are part of the old paradigm and if they cant find a new business model based on the new one they will die. Open access, Open publication and Open peer review are the future.

I wish you good luck in the contest too.

Philip,

Thank you for a very interesting essay. I found your list of biases particularly to the point, because I agree with you that finding ways to minimize the effect of biases (by improving peer review and by other means) is crucial if we want humanity to optimally steer the future. Being aware of biases and actively fighting them is certainly one of the main goals that education should aim at, especially in the futurocentric perspective that I propose in my essay.

Good luck in the contest!

Marc