Monday, October 26, 2020

Peer Review

 



Here are two tweets from Dr. Kathryn Garforth that I wanted to ignore but in less than a week I read a blog post by Greg Ashman that I think I should share.

 

First, here are Dr. Kathryn Garforth’s tweets:

 

Kathryn Garforth, Ph. D.@GarforthEduc Oct 17 Replying to @GarforthEduc and @luqmanmichel

I have a long list of papers & books to read that are peer-reviewed and published, forgive me for not putting yours at the top of the list because of your aggressive & insulting manner in attacking my intelligence. I have paying clients that are my priority not boosting your ego.

As far as I know, your posts have not gone through the peer-reviewed process and published in a reputable journal. It is unrealistic to expect anyone to read absolutely every article they are interested in. I would be happy to read your posts if you pay me for my time.

Here are extracts from Greg Ashman’s blog post.

I could not have put it half as well as he has.

The purpose of this anecdote is to highlight that peer review is a relatively new idea. Pretty much all of the science we teach in school was developed in the absence of peer review and so to insist that it is a fundamental component of the scientific method is stretching things somewhat. And then there’s the fact that peer-review is also used for things that, well, I probably would not describe as ‘science’ such as the various unfalsifiable theories fashionable in the humanities. Real Peer Review is a Twitter account dedicated to highlighting the silliest and most amusing examples.

So, peer review can also act as a gatekeeper, guarding access to the sanctified lawns of the intellectual establishment.

As Real Peer Review demonstrates, just because something appears in a peer-reviewed journal, that doesn’t provide a guarantee of quality.

 

My comments: The basic problem with most Twitters is the fact that they rebut without reading the links attached. They think they know it all.

 

What has happened to our logical thinking mind? 

 

Daniel Kahneman, in his book ‘Thinking fast and slow’ stated the following:

“Our subjective judgments were biased: we were far too willing to believe research findings based on inadequate evidence and prone to collect too few observations in our own research…………… As expected, we found that our expert colleagues, like us, greatly exaggerated the likelihood that the original result of an experiment would be successfully replicated even with a small sample.”

 

You may read more research frauds on my post here.


I am in no way suggesting that we should ignore research reports but we should have an open mind about everything we read. 

 

I honestly don’t understand how I have insulted her intelligence. These same words ‘insulting my intelligence’ have been used by a few Twitters leading me to believe that they could be guided by people with a vested interest.

 

I don’t expect everyone to read all the posts on my blog. I link relevant posts to tweets I rebut. This is obviously because Twitter only allows a restricted number of characters. 

 

I would not even consider sending my papers for review. I have just enough to live a simple life and I am not about to pay anyone to read my blog posts either. It is provided FOC for anyone at all to read. My lessons too are free and had benefitted many around the world when I first published them online on my blog in 2010. At that time, I had not published the videos and it was just word documents. Now, even more readers are listening to my videos. I am confident I will continue to reduce the number of kids who will otherwise shut down.

 

I simply cannot understand why many say I am aggressive. Read my emails in 2018 to Robert Pondiscio and let me know how I have been aggressive. 

 

Read my comments on Pamela Snow blog post in 2018 and then let me know where I have been aggressive. 

 

My knowledge is based mostly on my experience and not from reading others peer reviewed reports.  

 

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