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[melindadansky]

Poll Voting on Reality

According to a piece in the New York Times, one scholarly journal is using crowd-sourcing in place of peer review

Comments

[markmc03]

Hmm. I see this poll stirred a hornets nest of debate.

I didn't mean my answer to be quite so simplistic but I discovered quickly that there was a severe limit on the number of characters it would accept.

The Quantum and the Lotus, the book I've been reading, goes into some detail about the nature of reality. I believe the bottom line is: there is no intrinsic autonomous reality. There are only contextual perceptions based on the interaction and interdependence of the perceiver and that which is perceived.

Much, much more complicated than that but it gives you a taste.

I agree that hackneed reactions via the internet does not always guarantee a quality response. I don't know that a time delay would even help. It comes down to the quality of the reviewer.

[melindadansky]

It comes down to the quality of the reviewer

You're right, and that's kind of what wildpaletz was getting at, too. I'm just getting really tired of "we'll poll all these people, and that will give us the right answer." If your sample is biased, it doesn't matter how big your sample size is.

[melindadansky]

Having had numerous papers rejected, many of which had lots of comments that showed that the *assigned reviewers* didn't *read the paper*, certainly not with any care, I'm not sure that this is worse than what exists.

Oh, you're not kidding. I've had the same problems with magazine submissions.

I still don't think an average of a biased sample gives you a good answer. :-)