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Peer Review in Science Has your scientific manuscript been rejected by a journal? Has your research proposal been rejected by a funding agency? Most professional scientist know the pain of rejection by unfair peer review. One would expect scientific peer review to be fair, objective, and efficient. After all, scientists are people who live by the scientific method – the most successful approach to the natural world that humankind has developed. Yet, practical scientific peer review is often flawed. Here is a book that analyzes the problems of scientific peer review from a broader point of view, considering insights from evolutionary biology, evolutionary psychology, and complexity. Written by a professional scientist for other scientists, the book addresses the daily need to undersdtand and deal with the limitations of scientific peer review.
Rejection Dealing with rejection is not easy for anyone. Rejection may lead to depression and, sometimes, even to suicidal thoughts. The reality is, however, that rejection often occurs for reasons that are illogical, unreasonable, or plain random. Such unwarranted rejection is much more frequent than is commonly thought. Moreover, it often occurs unintentionally. This book offers a better understanding of underappreciated yet common reasons for rejection, and is intended to help anyone dealing with rejection.
Evolutionary Psychology, Social Psychology Evolutionary psychology explains human behaviour from the point of view of Darwinian selection. One of the key aspects of social psychology is evaluating others, with subsequent decision-making on whether to associate with, fear, or start a fight with those we evaluate. A flip side of this process is individual responses to acceptance or rejection by others. This is the first book on evaluation of peers in the framework of evolutionar social psychology. It will be equally useful to scientists and non-scientists, as all of us are rotuinely involved in evaluating others or being evaluated ourselves.
Darwinism One of the central premises of this book is that individual and social behavioral traits developed through natural selection. Humans inherited numerous primitive features from simple life forms. Just as we utilize biochemical processes similar to those found in bacteria, worms, or non-human vertebrates, we have inherited basic emotional responses and behavioral features from our animal ancestors. Darwin suggested that various parts of psychology developed as adaptive traits, similar to anatomical, physiological, and metabolic adaptations. His suggestion formed the basis of evolutionary psychology as a scientific discipline. This book postulates that the propensity to judgment, that is, peer evaluation, has developed through natural selection as an individual and social trait, which is overall adaptive. Numerous implications of such an approach are discussed at theoretical and practical levels.
Complexity Complexity has become a popular buzzword, yet practical outcomes of research in complex systems remain limited. This book considers aggregates of redundant and diverse units which interact with the environment and with each other. Darwinian selection is imposed on these systems. Detailed analysis shows that mutual evaluation and selection among the untis of the aggregates is overall adaptive, yet it is necessarily stochastic in nature. As a result, individual instances of peer review may be non-adaptive or even maladaptive. The book offers practical advice on how to interpret and deal with maladaptive instances of peer review.
Degenerate Repertoires in Biology The notion of degeneracy is central to this book. The following links provide a reasonable introduction to degeneracy in biology.
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