Ed Poor wrote
I agree with much of what Dr. Connolley says, with one key exception.
We must take into account the possibilty of POLITICAL bias on the part
of journal editors. Since scientists and those who publish their findings are human beings, there is at least the theoretical possibility that they have human failings. One of these is the desire to be "considered right". Another is the desire to keep a steady paycheck coming in. Then there's always the desire to use science to advance certain causes.
The system of publishing results in referreed journals is by and large
an excellent one, but we would do the entire world a dis-service if we were to ENDORSE the process as incapable of error or bias.
Point (i): OK, there are arguments for a form of rather pure scepticism, which are hard to refute absolutely, a position that I think has been accepted by many European thinkers for the past 250 years at least.
Point (ii): This discussion of Ed's doesn't make much sense to me, other than by outlining how a radically sceptical argument about science could go. Wikipedia doesn't particularly 'endorse' the Journal of X by quoting it in articles relating to scientific topic of X. (WP doesn't 'endorse' a government news agency of nation N by quoting it, does it? Caveat lector still holds.) If the article [[Journal of X]] said what it printed was always 100% gospel truth, that would not only be a bad article, but would show a big misunderstanding of the common understanding of science. In the worst cases (Lysenko) you can get a whole system of academic publishing that's corrupt. The fact that that could happen doesn't mean that when quoting on WP highly respected journals in the scientific field there has to be an automatic qualification written in.
Charles