The first time I heard that the current method used to accept scientific article submissions to academic journals—the peer review of academic articles—was the gold standard to ensure the quality of academic research, the statement sounded reasonable to me. It seemed that everybody agreed that peer review was the best method.
However, watching poor decisions made in education, economics, healthcare, environmental care, and other industries by modern scientists and those who relied on them made me question this. Working at universities for more than twenty-five years also helped me to see the problems. Now, I think that the modern peer review of academic articles is better described as the paper money standard. Sometimes, it seems to work in the short run, but it always causes problems in the long run.
First, some history. Gold was adopted as money by people voluntarily because it worked better for this purpose than other assets. Current paper money, not even promissory notes for a specific amount of real assets (e.g., gold), was not adopted voluntarily by people. Governments assigned to themselves monopolies for creating money for their countries and decided to use paper money. They imposed this on people.
The modern university system and its way of approving scientific research is also not something that people voluntarily adopted. This system and the rest of the modern education system follows the Prussian model. First, it was forced on people living in Prussia by their despotic government in the second half of the 18th century. Later, it was forced on other people by their governments. The discovery of the truth was never the main goal of the Prussian system. The main goal was to make science and education serve the rulers and those who collaborated with the rulers to create obedient subjects.
(For a brief description of the Prussian academic system that we use today, see: “The Inherent Flaws of the Prussian Education System”, “What Has Happened to Our Great Universities?”, and “Why Are American Taxpayers Forced to Subsidize and Support the Prussian Education System?” For more examples of the problems in our Prussian education system, see “Measuring Performance in Education. Why Do Many Teachers Dislike It?”, “Education and Misinformation. Why Do Lies Often Win?”, “Teaching History and Racism”, and the articles you can reach from them.)
The modern Prussian academic system is a system that allows those who are already approved by it to control who is approved by the system and who gets to control the system in the future. The only way to get a doctoral degree in any area is to be approved by those who already have doctoral degrees from this system in that area. The only way to get published in academic journals that are considered high-quality journals by the system is to be accepted by those who already have articles published in these journals. This system attempts to replace critical thinking (using empirical evidence and drawing logical conclusions) by the authority of the anointed whenever the anointed do not like the conclusions of critical thinking. This is a system to prolong the life of bad ideas that serve the few.
The Prussian system also allows for continuing influence by corrupt politicians and bureaucrats who can provide more funding to scientists who serve them. Under free markets, people can only use their own money and the money of those who voluntarily collaborate with them to influence the ideas of others. Under this system, corrupt people can also use other people’s money to promote the ideas that the corrupt prefer.
Instead of a free market for ideas, this system leads to monopolization in sciences. With globalization, the system is even more monopolistic as it is a worldwide system and thus susceptible not only to corrupt domestic influences but also to corrupt foreign influences.
Some people had more freedom in science even thousands of years ago. For example, more than two thousand years ago, Greeks had at least four independent schools whose ideas survived to the present: Cynics, Stoics, Epicureans, and Hedonists. A new school with different ideas could be established without any approval from the earlier schools and could employ scientists and teachers without degrees from earlier schools. Even without resources that are available today, Greek scientists were able to make great advancements. A monopoly in education and science could not be created and survive without the government support of one system. Unfortunately, we do not have the same freedom these days. Instead, we have the government-protected monopoly of the Prussian system.
One thing that the Prussian system was good at was lying to everybody about how great it was and how everybody liked it. They distorted the teaching of history to support their false claims. Most Americans do not even know or have learned only recently that their education and academic science system is not an American system but a system that comes from a despotic militaristic culture that had no respect for principles on which the United States was founded.
If this Prussian system was great, there would have been no reason to pressure and, in many cases, force people into this system. Moreover, there would have been no reason to force people to finance it.
We need to respect the principles on which the United States was founded if we do not want to destroy this country. There is no special role for the federal government in education and academic science. Moreover, our state governments are restricted from interfering with interstate commerce. Education and academic science are interstate businesses—state governments should not interfere with them.
