Sometimes people make it clear what they don't know by professing what they think needs to change. Such is the case with this Wall Street Journal opinion article which attacks the concept of peer review. Now we should be clear, peer review definitely needs reform, but not for the reasons the article proposes. The authors write, "The result is an ideologically biased literature that's presented as an expert consensus... objections to progressive orthodoxy are relegated to social-media threads, blog posts and newspaper opinion sections." This of course is complete nonsense. There is far more variety of opinion in academic journals than is ever found in the pages of this and other newspapers. And it's important that the editors' desire to squelch all dissenting opinion be resisted. Anyhow. They come out with a novel concept: "a first-of-its-kind article type called 'Peer Review.'" It's a good idea - but actual readers of academic journals know it's not exactly new. My own article was just published with two adjoining 'peer review' articles. It's a format I've seen often.
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