This is why I've started to argue against "peer review." Because no one can decide a paper's correctness/legitimacy by sitting down and reading the work. The method just doesn't scale and certainly doesn't in settings that are zero sum like conferences (see the absolute shitshow that is ML peer review). It's become a entire waste of time and money.
The alternative I suggest is just submitting works to Open Review so there can be open discussions on the works. It removes the hostility from the setting and self biases towards reviewers/commenters being parties that are experts in that sub-niche as they're going to tend to be the only ones reading those papers, and especially reading closely.
Metrics are fucking hard and we don't improve systems by removing nuance from metrics. Yet as complexity has increased in our world, this has seemed to be the direction we've gone. It's bad for science and the current methods have far too many false negatives (improper rejects) and false positives (improper accepts) to validate it as a meaningful signal. We've tried so many ways to fix it while maintaining the institution that it's time to just try letting go of it. I honestly cannot find a great argument for keeping these journals around (yes, there are arguments, but not many ,,strong,, arguments, and specifically ones that lead to better science).
The alternative I suggest is just submitting works to Open Review so there can be open discussions on the works. It removes the hostility from the setting and self biases towards reviewers/commenters being parties that are experts in that sub-niche as they're going to tend to be the only ones reading those papers, and especially reading closely.
Metrics are fucking hard and we don't improve systems by removing nuance from metrics. Yet as complexity has increased in our world, this has seemed to be the direction we've gone. It's bad for science and the current methods have far too many false negatives (improper rejects) and false positives (improper accepts) to validate it as a meaningful signal. We've tried so many ways to fix it while maintaining the institution that it's time to just try letting go of it. I honestly cannot find a great argument for keeping these journals around (yes, there are arguments, but not many ,,strong,, arguments, and specifically ones that lead to better science).