#PeerReview #ConfirmationBias @JeffreyUnerman article on Risks from self-referential peer review echo chambers developing in research fields: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.bar.2020.100910
I find this important for #DiversityandInclusion #TrustInPeerReview and summarize it in the following thread
#PeerReview #ConfirmationBias 'A characteristic of the recent resurgence in populism and post-truth politics is development of communication echo chambers built upon and entrench selectivity bias'
#PeerReview #ConfirmationBias people pay more attention to information confirms and reinforces their preconceptions than they pay to information that challenges these views. Academics are no exceptions and selectivity bias can damage the academic community itself
#PeerReview #ConfirmationBias #fakenews 'The legitimacy of academia through societal valuing of research requires us to confront the fake news and echo chambers of post-truth politics by reinforcing the importance of impartial, reliable, and credible academic evidence.'
#PeerReview #ConfirmationBias 'we need to recognise that selectivity bias is not limited to consciously seeking views and information that reinforce a preferred viewpoint while consciously ignoring or downplaying other views and information.'
#PeerReview #ConfirmationBias 'we need to minimise the risks of unconscious confirmation bias in our own research if we are to have credibility in promoting the importance of reliable evidence informing policy and practice.'
#PeerReview #ConfirmationBias 'In principle, a range of informal and formal peer review and feedback processes should act as a safeguard against confirmation bias in published research.'
#PeerReview #ConfirmationBias 'However, these peer review processes can only be effective if we guard against academic communities developing self-referential echo chambers that fail to challenge and test underlying ideologies and other taken-for-granted assumptions.'
#PeerReview #integrity 'We need to continually demonstrate that our evidence is a result of application of our skills in dispassionately collecting and analysing data through rigorous methods with the highest levels of academic integrity.'
#PeerReview #TrustInPeerReview 'These academic skills should position us well to be regarded as trusted sources of information, even where information users do not engage with the detailed results of individual research projects.'
#PeerReview #TrustInPeerReview 'For policymakers who do have the motivation and abilities to engage with the detailed and specific insights from our research, we need to continually strive to ensure these are as reliable, credible, and impartial as possible'
#PeerReview #ConfirmationBias 'To fulfil its role in both improving work-in-progress and providing a reputable badge of the quality and integrity of published research, peer review needs to actively identify and challenge entrenched views underlying research projects.'
#Peerreview #ConfirmationBias 'This requires both questioning explicit biases and identifying confirmation biases of which authors might not be aware.'
#PeerReview #ConfirmationBias 'Exposing research to review from experts who work in the same (sub)field as the research output being reviewed has many merits in helping improve the quality of the research through feedback and critique.'
#PeerReview #ConfirmationBias 'However, solely exposing research to such experts does little to challenge confirmation bias flowing from shared ideologies and assumptions within the (sub)field.'
#PeerReview #ConfirmationBias 'because of this confirmation bias, fellow academics who themselves are deeply embedded and invested in shared underlying theories and methods are less likely to be able to identify and expose flaws and limitations in these theories and methods.'
#PeerReview #ConfirmationBias 'peer review among narrow communities of academics can result in closed or largely impermeable peer review networks which take on the characteristics of echo chambers, failing to recognise or challenge potentially major weaknesses in a research topic
#confirmationbias Example: 'One of the fundamental assumptions underlying many research studies in both accounting and finance, including the large number that examine reactions of capital markets to financial statement disclosures, is embodied in agency theory'
'that, unchecked, agents (managers) will seek to maximise their own financial returns at the expense of principals (owners). This often-unquestioned assumption is grounded in free-market capitalist ideology where human decisions and actions are regarded as always determined by'
‘rational’ people as being “utterly despicable, selfish, greedy and lazy. This ideologically-driven characterisation of human nature, which implicitly underpins much capital markets research, has been repeatedly challenged by evidence and reasoned arguments @KateRaworth
'Of course, it is possible that participants in capital markets and senior corporate executives might be more likely than the general population to have been socialised into adopting economically self-interested motivations.'
'Where this is the case, it could make the economic rationality assumptions underlying particular capital markets studies a good enough approximation to the actual behaviour of those whose behaviour is being proxied.'
'But assuming this without providing reliable evidence for it can weaken any study that relies implicitly on such an assumption – often without even identifying this as a potentially problematic ideological conjecture.'
'Such manifestations of confirmation bias can thereby reinforce the echo chamber of capital market studies in accounting&finance by failing to challenge key tenets of their underlying ideology even where these key tenets have repeatedly been shown to rest on shaky foundations'
#DiversityandInclusion One way to help reduce unquestioning reliance on such ideology is to ensure researchers are exposed to wider studies. The narrower the range of literature typically cited by papers in any journal, the less is any opportunity for cross-fertilisation of ideas
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