Re:When does peer review make no sense?
by sdegutis on Tuesday February 16, 2016 @01:58PM
(#11112238)
It's really telling that git came into existence all because Linus Torvalds got frustrated with the existing state of version control tooling and went out on a 2 week code binge to create the thing he wanted. No amount of discussions or dialog or code reviews or retrospectives or any of that helped resolve the issues everyone in the industry was having with the state of version control. It came down to one guy just getting frustrated to the point of sitting down and writing the dang thing.
Re:When does peer review make no sense?
by SapphireSun on Tuesday February 16, 2016 @02:05PM
(#11112280)
??? Peer review is there to disseminate good knowledge. Nothing stops you from attempting to do stuff with things you've invented. For some things though, it's not necessarily self evident that what you did was good, and expert review helps ensure that randos reading the literature can at least trust it to make basic sense, even if it may not always be correct.
Re:When does peer review make no sense?
by sdegutis on Tuesday February 16, 2016 @07:32PM
(#11114239)
Yes, but peer review is limited by the understanding, imagination, vision, and intelligence of the peers, who are not always peers in such aspects. Sometimes it takes creativity and individuality, as well as a little confidence, to come up with the right solution. But committees are not designed for that kind of solution. They're merely designed to analyze data and come up with a dry answer in conformity with "core principles", which is at odds with the kind of raw humanistic creativity you get when you just say "screw it" and go on a 2 week code binge to write the thing you needed all along. That's why git exists. It could never have come about through code reviews or other types of committees.
Re:When does peer review make no sense?
by SapphireSun on Tuesday February 16, 2016 @07:58PM
(#11114375)
Sure, but nothing ever stops you from publishing stuff yourself (unless you've signed e.g. patient confidentiality agreements or are otherwise prohibited by law). It just bears a bit of a stigma if the proper venue is a peer reviewed journal.
Re:When does peer review make no sense?
by exelius on Tuesday February 16, 2016 @01:58PM
(#11112234)
> And today, the idea marketplace does not need to be mediated by conferences and papers.
You could say that posting to HN is a form of peer review (in the vain you mention it at least). Anyone is free to comment and tear the author's article apart.
Re:When does peer review make no sense?
by norswap on Wednesday February 17, 2016 @06:51PM
(#11122551)
But then the review themselves get reviewed, and those get reviewed, etc
In the end you get a rough global consensus. It's far (very far) from perfect, but maybe more representative of impact than the opinion 3 guys deeply embedded in a system that doesn't exchange with the outside world enough, and that are often competing with you.
This suggestion is as extreme and misguided as suggesting that code review is harmful.
To quote Knuth:
"In fact what I would like to see is thousands of computer scientists let loose to do whatever they want. That's what really advances the field."
And today, the idea marketplace does not need to be mediated by conferences and papers.
There is however, one aspect in which removing them is tricky, and that is funding. Currently, publication is a metric used to grant funds or evaluate the result of research. If we removed that metric, it would just likely be replaced by other forms of gate-keeping that are as bad. And giving money to anyone is kind of problematic, of course; even just a permissive filter (checking for "reasonableness") would let in way too much candidates w.r.t. available money. I don't really know what could solve that particular conondrum.