I’m a bit conflicted about the goal of separating the “hard, cold, objective” science from “soft, warm, subjective” things such as reputation and trust. It may

I’m a bit conflicted about the goal of separating the “hard, cold, objective” science from “soft, warm, subjective” things such as reputation and trust. It may be the case that some publications can be perfectly evaluated based purely on the text of the manuscript, but in most of the work I’ve read and written there are countless little details that are not discussed in the text. The manner in which the authors have handled such details can greatly affect the quality of the research. How carefully did they write the one-off script that produced the figure? How closely did they follow the study protocols? How much did they look out for issues that might undermine the results? Such an evaluation may only be possible after following the work of an author over time and perhaps through direct collaborations. In practice, we may get better outcomes if peer reviewers completely ignore these aspects and evaluate all papers purely based on what’s on the page. But I don’t think it is obvious that any reliance on trust and reputation should be derided as bias to be eliminated.