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
110 MITROFF & CHUBIN: PEER REVIEW AT THE NSF (1) most social issues, and for that matter, topics on the leading edge of the sciences (natural as well as social) are conflictual in nature: that is to say, it is difficult, if not impossible, to secure widespread agreement (at least initially) as to their basic definition, let alone their solution; (2) the failure to secure agreement is not because such issues inherently defy treatment or analysis, but because various parties, due to their respective social, intellectual, and/or value positions, will perceive the same issue in very different ways: in a word, parties at interest bring fundamentally different background assumptions to the same issue; as a result, they tend to develop various interpretations of the same set of data (observations or 'facts'); (3) by themselves, data or facts may not be sufficient to resolve the dispute between contending parties, but may actually serve to intensify it;" therefore, rather than presume and depend upon initial agreement between parties, what is required is a method for identifying the disparate assumptions that parties bring to an issue and its debate. Table 1 is a dialectical representation 1 2 of the views of the proponents (pro) and the critics (con) toward the peer review system, as currently used by NSF. A careful reading of the report by the US House of Representatives on National Science Foundation Peer Review," plus related documents by the proponents and critics of the present system, 1 4 clearly reveals the operation of two distinct sets of assumptions about peer review. This means that in Table 1 for every assumption or contention we have identified as characteristic of the position of one side, we have identified a counter-assumption which is characteristic of the other side. Not only are the assumptions on each side strongly held by their proponents, but they are maximally opposed as well. For each assumption which is characteristic of the one side, there is an equally strong assumption on the other such that the two assumptions are the diametric (or nearly diametric) opposite of one another) 5 This characteristic procedure is largely responsible for making the dialectic a distinctive means of conducting policy analysis. 1 6 By aligning the positions side by side, the method explicitly contrasts and draws out the implications of each. It not only shows what each position affirms (that is, what it alone entails) but it also shows explicitly that to which it is maximally opposed. Clearly, no position, no matter how internally consistent and comprehensive it is, is ever completely self-contained. As a result, no position can be
