I just need to copy and paste this every time someone on the fediverse posts anything about COVID.

@freemo god knows how people conducted their lives before peer review

@skells they believed in things like draining blood for the common cold and a lot of people died. Thankfully we have come a long way since that.

@freemo indeed, a great deal of science was conducted against an uphill battle against public prejudice and vested interests

thankfully, on a long enough time scale, the truth tends to out

@freemo but yeah, not to put too fine a point on it, the experts are clearly not doing their jobs across the board

critical thinking means critical thinking, not *necessarily* following the current academically accepted methodology of research to the exclusion of all else

@skells Thats not a criticism of peer review, that is a critisim of the conduct of those who participate in peer review.

I can get 3 crackheads off the street to peer review something, doesnt mean it will improve the quality. Yet if i pick good critical thinkers for peer review it will. Its not a panacea it is only one part in what makes good science. But you cant do good science without it, not at a group level.

@skells Its similar to democracy. Simply having one doesnt garuntee a sound government unless the population that is voting make wise choices with their vote. But that hardly suggests a dictatorship is any better.

@freemo I have no criticism of peer review, I disagree that people can't reason critically without it.

If a democracy becomes corrupt/dysfunctional it's not rational to continue to put faith in the bad actors that have corrupted it.

I don't understand anywhere near enough of the science to call the shots, but I've seen enough thumbs on the scales over the last year and a half to harbour deep distrust for those calling said shots.

@skells People can reason just fine without peer review. You just cant make effective scientific headway without it. There will always be those who are so strongly influenced by bias that they twist objective facts and reality to their opinions. These people cant reason well on their own. There are others who can reason well on their own who are more critical of their own biases.

Peer review, when done properly, simply helps expose this. No one in their right mind would object to a process where mutliple people review a work and publish any mistakes they find which can then be either read by the end consumer (reader) or is used in public debate to help improve the publication.

I think its kinda obvious the importance of peer review and there is a reason we were killing people more than helping them before it became the norm in the medical community. Or that before becoming the norm flat-earth was a legitimate consideration.