On Mon, 19 Feb 2001, Greg Kuperberg wrote:
> In mathematics peer review really serves two different purposes: To weed
> out papers that are *wrong*, and to segregate work by how *important*
> it is. It has really been true all along, since decades before the math
> arXiv even began, that most mathematicians can trust each other to produce
> correct work most of the time.
>
> I do wonder whether name recognition and self-policing would have
> vouchsafed the same quality all along.
This is a clear statement of Greg's hypothesis, and I will not debate
it further. Let's now wait for the empirical results to see how correct
it was for (1) mathematics, (2) physics, and (3) other disciplines.
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Received on Wed Jan 03 2001 - 19:17:43 GMT