Hi,
I have a strong doubt about peer-review process of certain conferences - how do you think if reviewers who don't hold a master review research proposals submitted by PhD researchers, for example...? I understand that conferences are for diverse people and it's good as it is but I still think this is not a very fair process. To be a reviewer, I believe some sort of screening shall be made in order to keep the quality of reviewing. "Blind peer-review" is not enough to assure quality.
Terumi
Interesting point Terumi but raises the same question and the same problem: who are the gatekeepers who make that decision?
Peer reputation is a social construct in which a person's roles, interests and recognised competences within a peer community determine eligibility and rank. A PhD is a miniscule part of a body of evidence: the revewers' contributions to the field weigh far more heavily than their formal qualifications. To become a reviewer means that you are judged by your peers to have made enough of a contribution to be capable of recognising expertise of others in the area.
It's absolutely not about certificates. Even if it were, a PhD is examined through a highly fallible peer review process and, worse still, one that may have taken place a long time ago and that does not imply generalisable or current competence. A PhD (hopefully) demonstrates that its holder once had a minimal level of competence in a particular and often quite limited subset of reasearch methods and practices at the time it was attempted, but no more than that. More importantly, the absence of a PhD does not prove a lack of competence.
Wittgenstein wrote what was, at the time and perhaps to this day, by far the most important philosophical work of the 20th century yet he had no PhD*. Similarly, Einstein had no doctorate when he did most of the work for which he is most famous. Conversely, I know many people with PhDs whose judgment as peer reviewers I would not (and do not) respect at all. And there are many more whose opinions I would respect in their own field of expertise but not in my own!
---
* This was, incidentally, an omission that was corrected so that Wittgenstein could teach at Cambridge, by treating the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus as his thesis, on which he was very informally examined by two other giants of 20th century phiilosophy, Bertrand Russell and G.E. Moore. For lovers of philosophy, there is a gently humorous recreation of the event at http://www.sfu.ca/~jeffpell/Phil467/WittViva.pdf in which Moore delightfuly (and perhaps rightly) concludes that the Tractatus Logicus is not up to the standard required for a Cambridge doctorate.
Hi Jon,
Thank you for the sharing - I understand your points. I just think all people w/o PhD are not Einstein (I know that's not what you mean). And I remember reading somewhere that at his PhD defense, Wittgenstein said to his dissertation evaluation committee members that it's beyond their reach to understand. Just I do not like the online auto-registering system of reviewers that I see more often these days and am wondering if there are any gatekeepers in the whole process!
Terumi
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