The Absence of Trust and Its Implications for Academic Peer-Review in Puerto Rico and elsewhere*

    I was thinking about what happened about a decade ago, when a feminist professor so clearly breached academic protocol without facing any institutional consequences whatsoever. If this were an isolated incident, it would not have been a problem, but it has personally occurred on so many occasions, that I began to ponder its meaning.  A few more examples will be provided before we get on with the theoretical discussion.

    When I wrote my first book, I lent a copy to the physicist Alfredo Torruella for him to read and comment upon the materials.  When I got back to Torruella, he provided good insights into the work.  However, towards the end of our chat he briefly informed me that he had consulted with a friend, who told him the physics described in the book was  bogus.  I would have been terribly humiliated, and possibly offended, were it not for the fact that I had so thoroughly researched the book--in particular the issue of the equipartition theorem in Boltzman's physics--that I knew his claim to have  simply been in error.  Although I do not know who the second physicist is, I do have some suspicion, given that he too has tended to venture now and then into the history of science, mistaking his knowledge of physics for a knowledge of the history of physics.  It is an error made my many scientists.

    On another occasion, when I first presented my doctoral thesis proposal to the history department committee, it was vehemently opposed by Prof. Mayra Rosario, who alleged that the 'telephone had always been an object of want'. Anyone who knows anything about the history of telecommunications and 'networks' knows this claim to also be in error, given that the value of a network is proportional to the number of users in that network. (In economics this is known as an "externality" whereby the value of an object is independent of its own particular merits.)  There are plenty of distinctly clear  historical examples of 'externalities' during the early days of the telephone. In essence, you want to belong only to the network that will connect you to significant others, products and services.  When two networks don't interconnect--as the often did during the early days, the value of each respective network was drastically reduced.  Rosario committed one of the most egregious errors in the profession of history: that of 'presentism' where we project contemporary values and assumptions onto the past.  Rosario is apparently unaware of the book "The past is a foreign country".

    I should note that the 'absence of trust' is obviously not confined to Puerto Rican academia.  While at the University of Texas (Austin), I was taking a research seminar and presented an early sketch of what would eventually be published as a formal "peer reviewed" academic article.   In the middle of my presentation, a co-graduate student Gregg Cushman (now a professor at the University of Kansas), interrupted me and issued such a vitrolious attack that it took me completely by surprise, leaving me flabbergasted and literally speechless.  Cushman claimed that, contrary to my statement, General Leclerc never invaded Haiti, proceeding to give hundreds of 'details' as to where Leclerc had been during Napoleon's tenure.  How do you argue with someone who is so vehement about mistaken facts?   After the class, I looked for a copy of CLR James's Black Jacobins, and photocopied page after page where Leclerc is cited in the classic work.   The only regret I have is that I did not give a copy to the rest of the students, but rather handed it only to the professor. 

    Consider for a moment these four examples (the above and Barcelo Miller), and what they generally imply for academia in Puerto Rico and, more broadly, the institutional dynamics of peer review in academia as a whole.

    It is patently clear that peer review only works when those who participate in the process are 'virtuous' and 'honorable' scholars. That is to say, peer review is not designed to 'knock off potential rivals', but rather to point out potentially serious omissions and to broadly assess the merit of the academic work.  This is part of the system of US academia which, in general, tends to work to some degree or another, although there are always its exceptions.  Academia is what Arnold Toynbee would refer to as a 'field of relations'; when those relations are characterized by honesty, integrity, and genuine rigor, academic intellectual progress advances as a whole, and society benefits thereby from its existence.

    Why certain social systems tend towards corrupt dynamics and outcomes is a complex topic beyond the scope of this very brief annotation. However, it is clear that, in that the overall distribution between 'honest' and 'dishonest' professors is extremely important for the overall advancement in academia, and of its standing in society.  Academia would have no value whatsoever--this is as true of the humanities as of the sciences--if it were composed of self-serving individuals which made no actual contributions to the general body of knowledge in society. This is one of the reasons why plagiarism is seen with such low regard in the US culture of academia, and tantamount to 'academic suicide'. 

    The 'field of relations' in academia is an extremely important point to emphasize, particularly when seen in light of other social processes.

    Much of social activity does not require the presence of 'honesty' and 'virtue' for its relatively adequate social functioning.  Commercial transactions, for example, could be characterized by inflated prices, but in the absence of willing buyers, corrupt merchants would simply go bankrupt.  In certain social settings, there are 'built in' truth mechanisms, which help to regulate the functioning of such processes so that they do not collapse.  Some would call it 'the invisible hand of the market', others would refer to it as 'information symmetry'.

    Yet in academia, these 'field of relations' could not be more important, in that the sole product of academia basically consists of words in ink and paper: the communication of new facts, ideas or interpretations.  When the 'emotional network' of academic processes reach a certain level of corruption, they simply stop working.  Society is actually harmed rather than aided by its very existence.  The very mirror which we use to look back at ourselves would be horribly distorted, leading to gravely erroneous social policies and Platonic self-knowledge.

    Finally, key in all of this is that peer-review, held with such high esteem in US academia, becomes a defunct process without any value whatsoever to the totality of academic body of knowledge.  If the individuals that are evaluating hard-earned academic books are so biased or corrupt (pick your choice) so as to not provide a fair interpretation of the piece, the process might actually harm academic advancement in that it would prevent genuinely original works from ever reaching the light of day.

    Peer review, that  key criteria of  'academic rigor' used at the moment to define work, would merely come to represent the opposite of its public perception.