Braun Tibor, Schubert András (szerk.): Szakértői bírálat (peer review) a tudományos kutatásban : Válogatott tanulmányok a téma szakirodalmából (A MTAK Informatikai És Tudományelemzési Sorozata 7., 1993)
IAN I. MITROFF and DARYL E. CHUBIN: Peer Review at the NSF: A Dialectical Policy Analysis
125 MITROFF & CHUBIN: PEER REVIEW AT THE NSF The columns represent the admittedly oversimplified case where the actual state of the system is either biased or unbiased. 5 9 Cases I and III represent the supposedly 'true' or 'correct' situations, where the system is either unbiased or biased and the perceptions or beliefs of scientists match the correct state of the system. Cases II and IV represent the more interesting and 'problematic cases' we can make this judgment, and claim that these two belief conditions demand special examination, even if we cannot determine the absolute state of the system. Suppose for a moment that the NSF peer review system is biased. What, if anything, would it take to convince the sizable number of scientists who believe that it is unbiased to think otherwise? A body of social psychological evidence and arguments suggests that on the whole scientists are conservative in their judgments, 6 1 and that those who select a career in science partially do so because they have an overly developed need to believe in the orderliness of the world, if not in its ultimate rationality. 6 2 Consider, too, the oversocialization argument: the vast majority of scientists are trained for normal, workaday science and not for great or extraordinary science. 6 3 They are neither trained or interested in challenging old theories, 6 4 let alone prepared to invent novel or 'revolutionary' theories. At the same time, since strong evidence and arguments exist that the system of science is strongly elitist in its structure and orientation, 6 5 Case II cannot be dismissed or ignored. To state the matter somewhat differently, Cases II and IV represent situations of denial or projection. Case II represents the situation of denying there is a problem when there is; Case IV represents the situation of asserting there is a problem when there is not. Case II entails the classic phenomenon of identifying with the aggressor, where in order to ease the painful admission of being the underdog, the underdog or victim overly identifies with the values of the aggressor. The question is: How many of those scientists saying that the NSF peer review system is unbiased are identifying, consciously or unconsciously, with the values of élite scientists? For analytical purposes, scientists are constantly being grouped into 'elite* versus 'non-élite'. Given the endless jostling for position that goes on in academic life, plus the constant ratings of departments and institutions to which scientists are subjected, we can plausibly assume that scientists themselves are aware of their relative standing. 6 6 What does it do to the self-esteem of scientists to know they are located in an elite or non-élite department or institution? Can we expect this
