There seems to be to assumptions that need to be correct for blind review to be detrimental:
Both
A) Older established scientists are more likely to be correct when they are positing an anti-establishment thinking explanantion than a younger, less established scientist, and
B) those scientists are nonetheless no more capable of marshaling the required set of arguments to do so when faced with blind review than that younger scientist.
I have no issue with A), but B) seems to me to be supremely unlikely—the very factors of an established pattern of rigor that make it more likely that an older scientist may be a safer bet when he breaks from the establishment than I am, also would appear to make it more likely that he or she can establish the case without relying upon reputation.
I might be wrong, but I wouldn’t have to fake surprise at learning I was.
I think your argument, on the other hand, relies on the assumption that the reviewers are objective and rational. In an ideal world, they would be. In practice, however, just seeing a conclusion they don’t agree with may be enough that they won’t evaluate the argument wholely on its merits.
As a somewhat over-the-top example: suppose you were a reviewer in a popular biology journal which, due to its popularity, also got lots of low-quality submissions. Now you are told to review an article whose author you don’t know, but which argues that our common conception of how evolution works is actually really flawed. You know that lots of deluded creationists bombard the journal with submissions arguing points like these, and you have had the misfortune of personally reviewing several before this. (They were all completely worthless.)
Then an alternate universe where the situation is exactly the same, but the journal hasn’t implemented a policy for double-blind reviews. You are told the name of the author, which is Richard Dawkins.
In which scenario do you think you’ll give the submission a more fair hearing?
There seems to be to assumptions that need to be correct for blind review to be detrimental: Both A) Older established scientists are more likely to be correct when they are positing an anti-establishment thinking explanantion than a younger, less established scientist, and B) those scientists are nonetheless no more capable of marshaling the required set of arguments to do so when faced with blind review than that younger scientist.
I have no issue with A), but B) seems to me to be supremely unlikely—the very factors of an established pattern of rigor that make it more likely that an older scientist may be a safer bet when he breaks from the establishment than I am, also would appear to make it more likely that he or she can establish the case without relying upon reputation.
I might be wrong, but I wouldn’t have to fake surprise at learning I was.
I think your argument, on the other hand, relies on the assumption that the reviewers are objective and rational. In an ideal world, they would be. In practice, however, just seeing a conclusion they don’t agree with may be enough that they won’t evaluate the argument wholely on its merits.
As a somewhat over-the-top example: suppose you were a reviewer in a popular biology journal which, due to its popularity, also got lots of low-quality submissions. Now you are told to review an article whose author you don’t know, but which argues that our common conception of how evolution works is actually really flawed. You know that lots of deluded creationists bombard the journal with submissions arguing points like these, and you have had the misfortune of personally reviewing several before this. (They were all completely worthless.)
Then an alternate universe where the situation is exactly the same, but the journal hasn’t implemented a policy for double-blind reviews. You are told the name of the author, which is Richard Dawkins.
In which scenario do you think you’ll give the submission a more fair hearing?