Grace LindsayThis, from PNAS reviewing instructions, is actually pretty good:
"The purpose of peer review is not to demonstrate proficiency in identifying flaws."
We're all just trying to flaunt our flaw-finding faculties.
MO Sugerman@Neurograce That’s how so many of us were trained in grad school: read this article, find the flaws, discuss them in seminar. 🤷‍♂️
@mosugerman yea I guess we need to focus on reframing the goal in journal clubs! Still identify flaws but say why they matter and how they could realistically be addressed
Marcel Haas@Neurograce @mosugerman during my student years, most journal clubs were indeed about burning papers to the ground. With one supervisor, though, they were about "what can we learn from this paper?" That last approach was much more fruitful.
Lorenzo De Carli@Neurograce this is a good point but, at the same time, checking that a work does not have major flaws is one of the purposes of reviewing. I struggle a lot with this - how to be positive without ignoring major structural
problems.
problems.
Matthew W. Thomas@ldklinux @Neurograce I think the point is that you should review the paper, but not in a *performative* way.
@mwt @Neurograce I agree, I just think that the line between “domain expert writing a thorough review” and “performative sniping” is kinda fuzzy. Although, of course, I have seen egregious examples of the latter.
Alisson Gontijo@Neurograce thanks for sharing. As I found that sentence alone a bit problematic (I get the point, but fear it’ll be more confusing than elucidating to many), I got interested in its context, but couldn’t find it on the pnas website quickly (’ll look more carefully later). Anyway, what matters is that It’s in several websites as this 2001 “Resources for Research Ethics Education” topic page, where it might originate from?
http://research-ethics.org/topics/peer-review/?print
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@Neurograce the full sentence is much clearer and important, I think - last sentence here: “Offer constructive criticism
Reviewers' comments should acknowledge positive aspects of the material under review, assess negative aspects constructively, and indicate clearly the improvements needed. The purpose of peer review is not to demonstrate the reviewer's proficiency in identifying flaws, but to help the authors or candidates identify and resolve weaknesses in their work.”
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@Gontijo I don't know that it is on the PNAS website; may just be in material they send to reviewers. But makes sense that they took it from more general peer review guidelines (though as far as I recall, did not cite them!)
@Neurograce got it, thanks. Also suspected that was the case. About the lack of citation: it wasn’t cited in the few other sites I checked either, but also consider that I didn’t do a thorough enough search to certify that the 2001 post is the original quote. Cheers