Peer Review: Good?

Yeah, I’ll agree it isn’t the best and even am an advocate to some degree that things like arxiv.org are good enough. (If you submit something bad to arxiv.org, it won’t be too long before someone posts a paper attacking yours, referee or not.)

That said, I think peer review has been more beneficial than hurtful and that we are better off for it.

I think they are necessary, but they definitely have weaknesses. Weaknesses that I think are becoming more and more apparent as the technology advances. As I’ve often said physics is probably in the strongest state with arxiv. However many disciplines really don’t have a functioning equivalent. The stranglehold of the journals and, to a degree, fads and traditions is unfortunate. Further I think as the so-called climategate scandal shows it’s important to put all the data out there for critique. The kind of loose practice that some scientists have done is unacceptable but is really allowed by the older journal model. In this day and age publishing your data on some publicly accessible server is trivial.

The other advantage that something like arxiv allows is better publication of negative results which most journals just aren’t interested in but which is arguably very important for research.