If you have not been peer-reviewed, screw you :)

There isn't a single route to intellectual inquiry, particularly when it comes to social issues and social policies.  But, academics have managed to develop a format that is increasingly used only to devalue the intellectual merits of discussions that do not conform to their preferred method.  And what is that one route to revelation according to the pointy-heads?

Why, "peer review," of course!

As I have noted, even in this blog, while the pubic might be led to believe that "peer review" ensures that earth-shattering research is carefully evaluated by peers, and accepted by them, the reality is far from that.  In addition to all those earlier points, consider what Brendan O'Neill writes:

Being peer-reviewed no longer simply means that you wrote an academic report that was considered by other academics to be serious enough for publication – it means you possess the truth, Pure Knowledge, elevated insights that are not available to mere mortals who have not been PR’d. So in the debate about climate change in particular, those whose work has been peer-reviewed are now held up as oracles of wisdom in contrast to their critics, who are increasingly written off and sent to the intellectual equivalent of Connaught with three simple words: ‘Not peer reviewed.’ To be peer-reviewed is to have the right to speak publicly on important matters – to be non-peer-reviewed makes you immediately untrustworthy, a bit of an intellectual charlatan, possibly even suspect in your motives.
There is a censorious dynamic at play here, as a divide is erected between those who are PR’d and those who are not, between those who we should listen to and engage with and those we should look down our noses at - in effect between those who say mainstream, acceptable things and those who spout off-the-wall, experimental stuff. It is ironic that Pickett and Wilkinson, so very keen on the idea of equality, don’t like the idea of an equal right to speak and critique. In this area of life, their attitude is: ‘If you’ve been peer-reviewed, let’s talk. If not? Screw you.’

Of all the "peer-reviewed" colleagues of mine, I doubt whether even ten percent of them will be able to have a meaningful conversation on their subject matters with the world of intellectuals outside that "peer review" circle.  One of the wonderful aspects of the internet is how much it has liberated intellectual conversations from the narrow confines of the incestuous ivory towers.

It might come as a surprise to many of the cloistered academics that there are plenty of intellectuals in the world outside the classrooms and labs.  And most of them couldn't care less about academics and peer-review.  Megan McArdle, who has no shortage of credentials, noted that:

This is not to say that the peer review system is worthless.  But it's limited.  Peer review doesn't prove that a paper is right; it doesn't even prove that the paper is any good (and it may serve as a gatekeeper that shuts out good, correct papers that don't sit well with the field's current establishment for one reason or another).  All it proves is that the paper has passed the most basic hurdles required to get published--that it be potentially interesting, and not obviously false.

Yep, that is all there is to peer-review.  In most cases, particularly when one moves away from the first tier journals with high impact factors, a peer-reviewed publication is nothing more than work done by a hardworking student who faithfully does all the required work, and on time.  The authors of such work are, unlike what they think of themselves, no "oracles of wisdom" as O'Neill puts it.

Let me quote Frank Furedi from a previous blog-post:

Increasingly, peer review has been turned into a quasi-holy institution, which apparently signifies that a certain claim is legitimate or sacred. And from this perspective, voices which lack the authority of peer review are, by definition, illegitimate. Peer review provides a warrant to be heard – those who speak without this warrant deserve only our scorn.