Commentator: Li Changxu
When he is angry, he is not necessarily a red face, but he may also be a disciple.
In the past two days, Lu Dewen, a professor at the School of Sociology of Wuhan University, has been furious. In his signed article, he said, "A doctoral dissertation I supervised was subjected to malicious review. This review opinion violates the basic principles of academic review, and compared with the limited knowledge shown by the reviewers and the level of insufficient ability to undertake such a serious academic review work, the arrogance of the review attitude, the arbitrariness of judgment, and the subjectivity of the standards are breathtaking. ”
The doctoral dissertation that made Lu Dewen "uneven" was evaluated by anonymous review: unqualified, and did not agree to the defense. The reasons given are that "the topic is too ambitious and very difficult to control", "it is not the quality of a doctoral dissertation from a well-known university or a university with a strong liberal arts", etc.
However, Lu Dewen believes that this evaluation not only violates the scientific principle of academic review, but also violates the principle of innovation. Moreover, establishing a causal relationship between the evaluation of academic works and the perception of the author's affiliation deviates from the principle of objectivity, and is obviously a malicious review.
The thesis written by the student did not get an objective evaluation, and he may have to postpone his graduation because of this, which is understandable for Lu Dewen to be angry. He did not hesitate to tear his face and angrily lash out at the blind reviewers, not only to seek justice for students, but also to tear apart the unknown side of the two-way blind review (both the reviewer and the reviewee are anonymous) in academic evaluation.
As a means of academic evaluation, two-way blind review is an important measure for universities to prevent dissertation release. From the perspective of the operation mechanism of blind review, it is generally fair, but it cannot avoid the phenomenon of "malicious review". Because the difficulty of this operational mechanism is, what criteria should be used to assign blind review experts? What are the criteria for determining a master's or doctoral dissertation to be qualified? Can the experts' individual academic views and position preferences be brought into the review? If the blind review is passed, will the defense committee necessarily pass? At present, there are no corresponding objective criteria.
Generally speaking, the graduation thesis is assigned to the corresponding blind review experts according to the subject category and sub-category, and try to do professional things for professional people, but it does not exclude exceptions, because some experts have a wide range of research fields, or they fill in a wide range of fields, but in fact, their level is not necessarily so wide, and it is entirely possible to assign papers to the fields that they are not familiar with at all, and it is difficult to be "professional" in their review opinions.
In addition, some university teachers pointed out that there are still a very small number of irresponsible experts in the review of papers. These experts, or like to release water, can pass through, and everyone is good; or blind review, looking unpleasant and unsatisfactory will not be passed; or very arbitrary, different from their own academic views and position preferences, they will all be shot.
Some are even more excessive, if the blind review of the graduation thesis does not cite the expert's own research results, or also criticizes his own views in the literature review, or criticizes the views of the expert's mentor, mentor and ancestor, or the humanities and social sciences thesis touches the expert's personal ideological forbidden area, it may not be approved.
Under the news of Lu Dewen's bombardment of "malicious review", a teacher from a university in Wuhan commented that the relevant papers of his master's graduates had won the second prize in the national competition, and published EI papers in authoritative journals in the field, and a paper in the second SCI area was in a state of revision, but his graduation thesis was still rated as unqualified by the blind review committee.
The reason for the chaos in the above-mentioned blind review is that the blind review expert does not need to bear any responsibility, and even if he maliciously evaluates or wantonly releases water, he is unharmed. Even if it is a water-release review, it will create problems for the defense committee in the later stage. Because it is obviously a bad paper that does not meet academic standards, once it passes the blind review, the student will say, "I have passed the blind review, why can't I participate and pass the defense?" ”
The blind review system itself is good and has also played a good role in academic evaluation, but its shortcomings are also obvious and it is necessary to pay attention to it. In order to prevent malicious review or bona fide release, it is necessary to improve the academic and moral standards of reviewers, formulate a more objective blind review standard, and establish a feasible appeal mechanism.
The most important thing is to establish a restraint mechanism for blind review experts, such as a blacklist system, so that those irresponsible blind review experts have something to fear. If their blind review is reported or found to be maliciously reviewed or wantonly released, once verified, they will be removed from the list of blind review experts and will no longer be used for life, then he will have to weigh carefully when reviewing.