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Abstract:
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Our current peer review system is an authoritarian tryanny resembling a priesthood or a guild. Refereeing brings out the worst in people. Jerzy Neyman, one of the founding fathers of modern statistics, said: ``... it is my experience that whenever a generally decent fellow is asked to act as an anonymous referee, he is apt to acquire hateful qualities: presumptuousness, quarrelsomeness, and bossiness.'' Neyman was right. Our peer review system made sense in the 1600's when it was invented. Over 300 years later we are still using the same system. It is time to modernize and democratize our approach to scientific publishing. I will discuss these problems and suggest some remedies.
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