Skip to content
quotesby

About this quote

What does it mean?
Peer review works in stable times but fails during scientific revolutions when established figures resist change.
In plain terms
Old systems slow down new scientific ideas.
What can you take from it?
Expect resistance to paradigm shifts from established institutions.

Where it applies

  • scientific debates
  • policy making
  • academic review

Putting it to work

  • support novel ideas
  • expect pushback
  • document evidence

Questions to consider

  • How do established fields resist change?
  • When does peer review fail?

Another view

Peer review still provides necessary quality control.

More from Hannes Alfven

  1. 'Students using astrophysical textbooks remain essentially ignorant of even the existence of plasma concepts, despite the fact that some of them have been know…

    Permalink to quote #3
  2. 'There is no rational reason to doubt that the universe has existed indefinitely, for an infinite time. It is only myth that attempts to say how the universe c…

    Permalink to quote #5
  3. 'The appeal of the Big Bang has been more ideological than scientific. When men think about the universe, there is always a conflict between the mythical appro…

    Permalink to quote #2

Related quotes

  1. Of all discoveries and opinions, none may have exerted a greater effect on the human spirit than the doctrine of Copernicus. The world had scarcely become know…

    Nicolaus CopernicusNicolaus Copernicus quote #8
  2. 'A Christian Anarchist does not depend on bullets or ballots to achieve his ideal; he achieves that ideal daily by the One Man Revolution with which he faces a…

    Ammon HennesseyAmmon Hennessey quote #8
  3. In art, there are only two types of people: revolutionaries and plagiarists. And in the end, doesn't the revolutionary's work become official, once the State t…

    Paul GauguinPaul Gauguin quote #15