A great overview of the history scientific journals and other forms of communication can be found here; naturally, it is a U of C production :-) and also the first hit on Google for 'first scientific journal'.
So, why ARE scientific articles refereed? Was the anecdote I gave in class correct?
Give me your thoughts, questions.
2 comments:
I think that your anecdote made a very important and somewhat subtle point, one which I would argue is at the foundation of what has been called the "modern scientific project," i.e. the founders of modern natural science, particularly the philosophic founders, such as Hobbes and Bacon, were attempting to establish a way of understanding the world that was fundamentally different from religion and revelation. Their intentions of course were focused primarily on the political consequences of such an attempt but science played a crucial role, as science was supposed to provide, through its practice and results in changing the world, a refutation of the arguments of revelation. Therefore it seems only natural that, since revelation operated through dogmatic passage of belief, science should operate by independent verification of facts by as many scientists as possible. Therefore, I think that articles were refereed in part to establish a system independent of the church, and in part to ensure that what was proposed as explanations for natural phenomena would be as a accurate with respect to all available evidence as possible. If things that were not correct were published it was not, I think, necessarily because they hadn't been properly refereed but perhaps because at the time when they were published all evidence suggested they might be correct. In other words, I think the first authors of scientific articles were fully aware of the need for their claims and observations to be verified by others in order to form any kind of sound basis for future progress in their understanding. Nor would that be surprising given that what Socrates was doing 2000 years before was very similar. After all he would go around asking people questions and trying to arrive at the truth from contradictions present in held opinions, which he could make groups of young Athenians to see and try to reconcile. In Aristophanes' play The Clouds, there are even suggestions of Socrates having students repeat experiments that he had previously done.
ps: I guess my comments here also get at What is science? in a certain way
When I review a paper for a class or for a professor I am working for, we mainly argue about whether the story is relevant and/or has a good impact, whether the proper controls have been exercised, and whether the evidence supports the hypothesis. I guess you need at least a few of your peers to believe your story or else the story will get lost in the ether, so to speak.
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