2016 RI KI Y5 Promo

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. In addition, there are no agreed-upon, evidence-based guidelines as to what constitutes a quali fi ed reviewer. Journal editors simply pick and choose whoever they think is suitable. This arbitrariness in what has been called the gold-standard for evaluating and selecting quality scienti fi c publication is disturbing, especially since we continually hail the value-free, objective nature of Science and its coherence in being able to explain the world we live in. We also wouldn't know if journal editors are accepting or rejecting publications based on what is currently trending or what they want people to read so as to boost article sales and publication pro fi t. Back in the day when data for music hits were compiled based on verbal reports by music store owners, it was common practice for music store owners to report whatever music genre was not selling well as their "top hit" so as to engineer more sales of that genre. This was the way rock n' roll made it to the top of the charts in the '70s. So who knows if journal editors are doing the very same thing and in fl uencing publication so that some authors get more visibility than others? RI 2016 YEAR S KI PROMO (Turn over 203

4 We needa new way of doing Science that eliminates all possible personal bias such that we are let with completely objective explanations of the world on which we can base our predictions. Only then can we say, with certainty, that our scienti fi c explanations and predictions of the world are true. - Adapted from "1 Hate Your Paper", by Jef Akst The author makes claims about the nature of scienti fi c knowledge. Discuss and evaluate the author's claims, using your own understanding of the nature and construction of knowledge in science as well as the ideas raised by the author. (30] END OF PAPER