Scratch notes from
“We know how to fix peer review” It’s an alignment problem. We can test this empirically, then publish the results in a journal of coordination science.
There are a lot of solutions to this, but we’re still bottlenecked by (1) people not understanding the “core theory” of alignment/coordination I sketched out above. A lot of time & effort & money is wasted because it doesn’t do anything to change the incentives. Another bottleneck I think is (2) not understanding that you have a role in actively shaping culture. You CAN change the incentives, even just for yourself, and benefit from that. I talk about this in “How to build culture tech”1.
Hossenfelder and Bik have solved one of the incentive problems by tying peer review to science communication. Science communication is a valuable thing to do that makes money (either funded by the community, or funded as entertainment). It doubling as review is a way to create more value, and fund the necessary work.
If the reviewers align too much to the entertainment incentive, they lose their status within the scientific community. The reviewers I want to listen to are the ones that the scientists & funders pay attention to.
I’ve been obsessed with “retroactive funding” because I think it’s the best possible system for people in my position. I’m not confident that I can always do the work, that I can recognize promising work before anyone else does. Instead of getting paid ahead of time, I want to just try it, and then IF it succeeds, then I also