"Scientific Peer Review Is Broken Because the Peers Are All the Same" -- new blogpost by Tabea Cornel https://hpsns.hypotheses.org/1122 

Some quotes from the piece below. 1/n

"Why does peer review not prevent the fruits of scientific racism, transphobia, and so many other damaging -isms and phobias from getting published?

My short answer is: it’s in the name." 2/

"Scientific authors and their peers ... were educated in a society structured by the same hierarchies along the intersecting lines of race/ethnicity, sex/gender/sexuality, dis/ability, and class (...) peer review is designed to reproduce the same views over and over again." 3/

"if you’re not actively fighting this dominant view, you’re complicit and responsible for the damage done. There is no neutral middle ground." 4/

"Most conversations about failures of scientific peer review have in common the assumption that peer review will weed out “bad science” and increase our chance of unveiling capital-T Truth. This strikes me as a positivistic and decidedly exclusionary point of view." 5/

"According to many scientists, the only “good science” seems to be one that unveils the Truth. And the only good scientist is the one whose “good science” pursues this Truth. And what the Truth is gets defined by the dominant culture (or shall I say “peers”?)." 6/

"(...) this environment is very hostile towards socially and intellectually minoritized groups. And this is why we seem to be stuck with a homogenous group of scientists whose peer review is a mechanism that reinforces the dominant view over and over again." 7/

(Reminds me of this other @IBJIYONGI paper and thread: https://twitter.com/IrisVanRooij/status/1203343241330012167?s=20)

"You think that diversity is the solution?

What good is it for diverse perspectives to exist but not to be valued?" 8/

Read the full blogpost here: https://hpsns.hypotheses.org/1122 

I hope many of my scientific collagues will read and reflect on the words of this historian of science. Honestly, there is no excuse anymore to remain ignorant and to evade our responsibility. 9/

See also this Statement from the History of Science Society: https://twitter.com/IrisVanRooij/status/1272934263588093952?s=20