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A particularly notable issue here is who is considered a peer. Another issue is this: it would be great for the early phase of designing research to have review involving a wider range of disciplines, and not just the output.

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Agreed. On who is considered a peer was part of the incestuous characterization described by Sen Proxmire

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Money, power and influence have become one-world issues when they used to operate only at a local level.

The language of religion is now the most pertinent to any and all "science" discussions.

In reality, a range of professions have been invented within the belief system now called Science.

Look at the history of humankind. Particular individuals noticed something in the natural and the physical world and looked deeper into into it - going down pathways not trod before and inventing ways of examining and testing what they were interested in while on their way.

Some of it used to be called natural history, some of it was called discovery and some called inventions.

Just think, Einstein and Bohr both died after a lifetime of reviewing the work of each other and still in disagreement. They both had very few neighbours who had depth of knowledge about physics to judge between their diametrical views. So much for consensus!

The internet has changed the size of the population involved in the judgement of the authenticity, truth or falsehood of ideas and propositions.

I wonder if I will still be alive when we have the new Nuremberg Trials of all the politicians. the big business money men and the media moguls who foisted the destructive falsehood of climate crisis due to human use of fossil fuel on all part of the world economy leading to catastrophic economic damage. Will they have the death penalty?

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Peer review seems to work typically by inviting just a tiny number of peers. Do you have thoughts on how to greatly expand the peers -- and to include people who may not be considered peers in their field but who may be especially good at detecting flaws? Making available preprints seems like a good thing since it enables the authors to get input from many more people. Since journals and professional societies become captured by specific viewpoints over time, how can we compensate/correct?

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That's where the open review option comes in. There are issues there as well, but it can help identify problems earlier in the chain from hypothesis to experiment or analysis to conclusion. I was involved in one #openreview process, submitting a review of aspects of Jim Hansen's sprawling much-covered 2015 paper "Ice melt, sea level rise and superstorms: evidence from paleoclimate data, climate modeling, and modern observations that 2 °C global warming could be dangerous" https://acp.copernicus.org/articles/16/3761/2016/acp-16-3761-2016-discussion.html

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