[Wonder Warthog]

"Remember, though, that "fringe" stuff is, by its nature, virtually unlimited in scope."

I suspect that the part of the "fringe" that is actually doing serious work is a limited subset, and that any competent journal author should be able to recognize serious science vs. "garage crackpots". The thing to avoid is "topics that must be rejected at all costs".

"The better way would be for "peer review" to continue to get criticism until it becomes synonymous with CYA and then lose out to people actually looking at data.

I'm not sure I understand how this would work. Can you elaborate??

[aruanan]

I suspect that the part of the "fringe" that is actually doing serious work is a limited subset, and that any competent journal author should be able to recognize serious science vs. "garage crackpots". The thing to avoid is "topics that must be rejected at all costs".

This is what I mean. You'd have to have a review process to separate the garage crackpots from serious science. Since there is so much fringe stuff out there and since serious science that is way outside the current paradigms looks to established science at any point in history like garage crackpot stuff, you'd have to have extremely well-read editors to be able to adequately evaluate what should and shouldn't be in.

"The better way would be for "peer review" to continue to get criticism until it becomes synonymous with CYA and then lose out to people actually looking at data.

I'm not sure I understand how this would work. Can you elaborate??

This would have to just entail a shift in attitudes to the point that people would go back to sharing their results in the same way they did before what we currently call "peer review" existed. And it wasn't that long ago, historically speaking.