Psychometrically oriented researchers construe low inter-rater reliability measures for expert peer reviewers as damning for the practice of peer review. I argue that this perspective overlooks different forms of normatively appropriate disagreement among reviewers. Of special interest are Kuhnian questions about the extent to which variance in reviewer ratings can be accounted for by normatively appropriate disagreements about how to interpret and apply evaluative criteria within disciplines during times of normal science. Until these empirical-cum-philosophical analyses are done, it will remain (...) unclear the extent to which low inter-rater reliability measures represent reasonable disagreement rather than arbitrary differences between reviewers. (shrink)

John Dewey's Public and its Problems provides his fullest account of democracy under the emerging conditions of complex, modern societies. While responding to Lippmann's criticisms of democracy as self-rule, Dewey acknowledges the truth of many of the social scientific criticisms of democracy, while he defends democracy by reconstructing it. Dewey seeks a new public in a “Great Community” based on more face-to-face communication about nonlocal issues. Yet Dewey fails to consistently apply his own reconstructive argument, retreating to a communal basis (...) for democracy. I offer an extension of Dewey's argument in this direction in which “publics” and not “the public” offer the best basis for reconstructing democracy. (shrink)