Academia's responsibility for knowledge integrity

Preliminary extended abstract

Jeremy Horne, Ph.D.

mindsurgeon@hotmail.com
Skype: jeremy.horne

A crisis no, perhaps it might be termed better as an emergency exists in

arena of peer review, particularly in academia, where the responsibility for knowledge
integrity is prime but has been compromised by lowered values in the university.
Everyone talks about peer review, but articles like the one Carl Zimmer published in the
16 April 2012 of the New York Times keep appearing, discussing how the whole process
has broken down. There is an increasing number of cases of papers being retracted
because of everything from poor quality to fraud. If this trend isn't reversed soon, we
could be living in an age where public information simply isn't reliable. More disturbing
is what may be called the growing borderland of knowledge, where a great body of
information is accepted as fact with few or no standards of peer review. The more
particularly disturbing aspect of this is apparently reputable academicians lending
credence to ideas that are questionable at best.
In this article I will explore the status of peer review and how academia might
respond to it. In the same breath I will ask this question of anyone (be it within a formal
organizational structure, or freestyle, or alternative settings in which learning occurs)
purporting to present what they think is knowledge. What is knowledge, who is to judge
the quality, what standards are used, and why, how does one come by it, and who is to to
benefit? I summarize what is involved in peer review, the problems encountered in the
process, some reasons for poor peer review, and some solutions. Peer review means
identifying and applying standards to what is objective, as in correspondence of an idea
to reality, consensus, and coherence. It covers not only academic articles but
encompasses the gamut of information dispersal from faulty software and its poor
documentation, defective products counterbalanced against the claims, business scandals
(e.g.: bankster bailout, Wall Street debacle), politics, sales and advertising, the legal
system, and to not the least, science. Peer review applies to wherever truth (integrity
conforming to what is deemed collectivity) is the paramount concern and where humanity
depends upon it for its well being.
Basic components of a successful peer review process include, among other
factors, an ethical environment both reviewers and audience, standards used to judge
quality, and quality reviewers. Ethics is predicated upon ethos, and until educators
identify the profound reasons why there should be education, little will change in the
current landscape of peer review.
Knowledge flows from consideration in epistemology (how we know) justified
belief, an accounting, or audit trail of how we have come to accept an idea. Knowledge
is the third element in a developmental process: data, information, and knowledge. A
proposal is advanced here for a knowledge quality specifications process, where
information is evaluated as to knowledge quality, or the degree to which we know, or
epistemological justification. Here, I propose methods for arriving at knowledge quality
standards, the reasons for having them, and ways of implementing them.
Some representative references
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/truth/

On plagiarism - http://www.theage.com.au/ http://www2.widener.edu/~cea/341hayden.htm

Knowledge Generation Communication Management (www.iiis.org)
www.plagiarism.org
Michael Shermer, The Borderlands of Science
Charles Sheffield http://www.baen.com/chapters/borders_i.htm
Peer reviewing - http://www.iiis.org/Videos2013.asp
Nobel Laureate Josephson and the paranormal http://www.tcm.phy.cam.ac.uk/~bdj10/mm/articles/PK_sci_measure.html
Articles by Nagib Callaos
on peer reviewing process
Zimmer - http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/17/science/rise-in-scientific-journalretractions-prompts-calls-for-reform.html?_r=2&src=dayp&
Failure of peer review - Chubin, D. R. and Hackett E. J., 1990, Peerless Science, Peer
Review and U.S. Science Policy; New York, State University of New York Press, p. 192.
Jefferson T, Alderson P, Wager E, Davidoff F. Effects of editorial peer review: a
systematic review. JAMA2002;287:2784 -6 http://jrsm.rsmjournals.com/content/99/4/178.full#ref-2 n tickets to a Madonna concert.
[http://www.aljazeera.com/news/americas/2012/07/201272195753767494.html]