sitemap/ google71a594b9a41d2ae0.html impunv: Sep 13, 2007
Thursday, September 13, 2007  Peer review  Peer review
(censorship) results in the destruction of knowledge undermining
the rationale for schools (the creation and dissemination of
knowledge), some badly needed, even resulting in many deaths.
These papers that are destroyed, with knowledge suppressed, are
generally correct and useful. This is not doubted. Their
suppression is often purely arbitrary. In academic institutions,
like in authoritarian societies, knowledge is not something to
be treasured, but is dangerous, something to be carefully
controlled, often suppressed. This is the very opposite of what
these institutions supposedly exist for. Suppressing knowledge
is a highly anti-social act, obviously. Why do presumably decent
people do such things, even when they know (as they must) that
what they are doing is wrong? There has been work in social
psychology (by people like Milgram and Zimbardo) showing that
with even a little situational pressur