Abstract
We certainly are not ambivalent about reviewers—we are grateful beyond words to you all for all you do, and we know that Science, Technology, & Human Values (ST&HV) would not exist without you. Authors have told us that they send their work to ST&HV because they know it will receive a thorough, fair, and constructive review. Heartfelt thanks from us, and from our readers and authors (whether published or not). Whatever the fate of any given paper, we know that the guidance you provide benefits its author now and for years to come.
While there is nothing ambivalent about the quality of your work and our appreciation of it, ambivalence aptly characterizes the competing demands imposed on the institution of peer review and on your role as a reviewer. I’d like to offer some reflections about the ambivalence of peer review.
The concept of sociological ambivalence comes to us through the writings of Robert K. Merton, widely acknowledged as the founder of the sociology of science, who borrowed the underlying concept—ambivalence—from psychologist Eugen Bleuler (Merton [1963] 1976). Bleuler coined the term in 1910 by joining ambi, meaning “both,” and valence, meaning “strong.” A person experiencing ambivalence feels equally strong forces pulling in opposite directions. Sigmund Freud used the concept to great effect in psychoanalysis, calling attention to dualisms of love and hate, life, and death. Merton set the concept in sociological context, using it to describe incompatible expectations imposed upon particular positions in society, such as the physician expected to be detached and impersonal, yet compassionate and caring, or the professor who is asked to mentor students and help them achieve their ambitions while evaluating their work and abilities in a fair and objective manner. Ambivalence is built into the social structure—the positions we hold, the roles we play—and thus is more systemic and enduring, not a matter of individual psychology. Merton was particularly concerned about the ambivalence of scientists who, he noticed, are torn between expressions of humility and demands for recognition. At one moment a scientist may humbly profess no interest in “that bauble fame” while in the next moment they vigorously insist on their priority for a discovery and the accompanying recognition and reward.
In science there is a more consequential ambivalence—the “essential tension” for Kuhn ([1959] 1977)—which pits claims to originality against the body of accepted knowledge, and “the successful scientist must simultaneously display the characteristics of the traditionalist and of the iconoclast ([1959] 1977, 227).” Notably, there is no difference to split, balance to strike, or golden mean to achieve: “the optimum climate for high-quality scientific research was not necessarily some compromise between extremes. Rather, achievement often flourished in the presence of factors that seemed antithetical” (Pelz and Andrews [1966] 1976, xv). Others have said much the same, before and since. Ambivalence pervades the daily work of scientists, demanding that they believe strongly enough in an original idea to pursue it with energy and time, while ruthlessly challenging an original finding with stronger controls and persistent pursuit of precedent.
Reviewers experience ambivalence, too: review is situated at the intersection of what is known and what is asserted to be original. They may be of two minds about a paper, tugged between the desire to acclaim the author’s original insights, and the responsibility to test new claims against the body of accepted knowledge, evidence, and method. The essential tension is not the only ambivalence of peer review and not the only force shaping the reviewer’s role. Some 30 years ago Daryl Chubin and I (1990) identified several other competing demands imposed upon peer review and its practitioners, including:
sensitive—selective: publish every deserving paper, but filter out every questionable paper;
efficient—effective: work rapidly and at minimal cost, but offer sound, thorough, expert guidance;
meritocratic—fair: evaluate manuscripts in a principled and impartial manner; but apply societal standards of fairness to ensure broad and diverse authorship.
The mean is not the answer—papers are not published by halves—nor will it do to embrace one pole of one dimension while rejecting its counterparts, because forces of change will eventually reveal the oversight. Much ink and ire have been expended in myopic arguments that favor one pole of one dimension, with little regard for the other dimensions and other poles that constitute the wider institutional context of peer review. Rather, the most sound and effective way to ease the tensions of ambivalence in peer review is through open and purposeful decisions about which dimensions and poles to emphasize, informed by historically grounded empirical research.
So What?
Suppose we now accept that sociological ambivalence pervades peer review, what does that mean and how may we benefit from the insight? The gains are admittedly modest, but worth mentioning. First, recognizing the essential ambivalence of peer review may inoculate us against thoughtlessly polarizing in favor of one principle at the expense of others: giving precedence to sensitivity over selectivity, for example, or efficiency over effectiveness. Imposing such arbitrary preferences will undermine peer review and distort decisions. Second, understanding something about ambivalence and the axes demarcated by polar principles will help us avoid misguided claims that peer review is broken or bankrupt when it might instead be positioned along one or another axis in a place we disfavor. Taken together, these two insights might spare our community some needless and fruitless argument. Third, if we understand that the sociological ambivalence of peer review may be represented by polar values and axes of variation (or vectors with intensity and direction, as Arribas-Ayllon and Bartlett 2014 have suggested), then we might be motivated to look for more such principles and to describe the cultural space more fully and accurately. Doing so leads directly to a fourth and final benefit: having identified principles in tension we might inquire into their origins, causes, and prospects for deliberate adjustment. Perhaps in a particular research domain with particular properties it would be better if reviewers were to emphasize specific qualities in the papers and proposals they review, while in another field under other circumstance it may be beneficial to give preference to other qualities. If today reviewers make such adjustments subconsciously or intuitively, all the better: let’s first understand what they’re doing, and then ask if we can do better.
If, in your role as a reviewer, you find yourself of two minds, torn about the merits of a manuscript, take heart: the cause of this condition is neither personal indecisiveness nor a defective review system but instead reflects the essential tensions that tug your evaluation in opposite directions. Adjudicate the tension as best you can, bearing in mind the distinctive needs of the field or specialty.
Heartfelt thanks to you, ST&HV Reviewers 2019-2020, from us and from our readers and authors (whether published or not) for all your efforts to advance scholarship in STS.
ST&HV Reviewers 2019-2020
