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2 Section A Answer one question. 1 "Mathematics is just a game played according to certain rules; it is ultimately meaningless How far do you agree? 30]1 "Science is made up of mistakes, but these mistakes are what lead us to the truth." Discuss. 2 30] 3 Should the study of society require more causal explanation than interpretive understanding? 30] 4 To what extent does bias affect knowledge construction? (30)

3 Section B You must answer question fi ve. 6 The Role of Peer Review Peer review has long been held to be the gold standard in determining the quality of any scholarly journal publication. Scienti fi c journals catalogue the contributions, thoughts, and opinions of researchers, investigators, and expets in the fi eld, and the prestige of a journal depends on the validity, usefulness, and quality of the articles published. The peer review process is essentially a quality control mechanism as it subjects research papers to independent scrutiny by other (anonymous) quali fi ed expets before the journal editor makes a fi nal publication decision. Theoretically, peer review should help authors make their manuscript better. But in reality, the cutthroat attitude that pervades the system results in ludicrous rejections for personal reasons--if the reviewer feels that the paper threatens his or her own research or contradicts his or her beliefs, for exampleor simply for convenience, since top journals get too many submissions and it's easier to just reject a paper than spend the time to improve it. Reviewers are also more likely to favour manuscripts that are clearly written, are creative, demonstrate positive results, and have interesting titles, and may more readily accept manuscripts from more prestigious institutions than those from lesser-known institutions Now, it is a well-known fact that, aside from its use in scienti fi c journals, peer review is the process by which grants are allocated, academics are promoted, textbooks are written, and Nobel prizes are won. A publication that has been peer reviewed gains respectability and acceptance and is considered a relevant contribution to the fi eld; peer review is a professional privilege and responsibility that directly impacts what is accepted as important to a body of knowledge. This is very important in Science, since nothing can be considered true unless veri fi ed by the scienti fi c community. The certainty of Science rests largely on how well new theories and ideas fi t in with the rest of the fi eld. But if peer reviews aren't as credible a process as is often believed to be, we wouldn't know if what is published is really true! Perhaps anonymous peer review should be abolished, because reviewers are biased by personal motives. Anonymity gives the reviewer latitude to say all sorts of nasty things, and allows for the in fi ltration of inevitable personal biases-against the scienti fi c ideas presented or even the authors themselvesinto a judgment that should be based entirely on scienti fi c merit.