It's not really obvious whether double-blind reviewing reduces implicit bias. You can still guess at who the author of a paper is, at least if they're in your community, and things like writing style provide subtle cues. I attended a conference that used double-blind reviewing (which isn't usual in my field) where the program chair basically gave the justification for it as wanting everyone's papers to get equal reviewing time -- avoiding the situation where some reviewer spends 3 hours reading their friend's paper, and 15 minutes reading the paper by someone they haven't heard of -- rather than reducing bias.
I think the only way to reduce bias is to get people to stop being bigoted assholes.
Both single-blind and double-blind reduce risk to the reviewer, but not entirely, because you still get situations where some eminent personality is willing to walk into a room full of people who were on the program committee and yell "Those assholes rejected our paper!" (and he at least knows the set of 16 people that those assholes were drawn from, even if he doesn't know who the specific assholes were who reviewed his paper -- but he's sure certain that they're assholes, whoever they are. Not that I've ever seen that happen.)
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Re: Peer-review
Date: 2008-02-27 02:39 am (UTC)I think the only way to reduce bias is to get people to stop being bigoted assholes.
Both single-blind and double-blind reduce risk to the reviewer, but not entirely, because you still get situations where some eminent personality is willing to walk into a room full of people who were on the program committee and yell "Those assholes rejected our paper!" (and he at least knows the set of 16 people that those assholes were drawn from, even if he doesn't know who the specific assholes were who reviewed his paper -- but he's sure certain that they're assholes, whoever they are. Not that I've ever seen that happen.)