[diego_moita]

> Imagine if people told Plato he couldn't write about philosophy because he didn't go to harvard and get a degree in philosophy. Or tell galileo that he was wrong because he didn't have a degree in astronomy.

Very interestingly, your examples only add to my point. Plato didn't had a degree in philosophy because philosophy was just being "invented"; Socrates (his master, btw) had just brought rigor to the sophists blabering. And Galileo didn't get a degree in astronomy mostly because it didn't exist by then. He did however get one in mathematics and tought astronomy in a university before he made his observations to support Copernicus' model. You see, both men where very far from amateurs giving opinions in a complex field.

> Valid scientific investigations don't require scientific training.

Bulshit. Most of times it does. Particularly in complex matters. That's why the peer review process matters. Numbers don't "speak for themselves"; that's why we talk about "lies, damned lies and statistics".

As a pratical exercise, I'd suggest you, as a "trained computer engineer", to let your projects to be designed and implemented by a non-trained computer engineer. You'd know what I mean.

[azgolfer]

Seems to me an a guy who couldn't get hired as a physicist had a rather large effect on physics in 1905. The hiring process is a form of 'peer review'.

[vena]

I really don't think you should take your understanding of Einstein's early career from Yahoo Serious movies.

[azgolfer]

from Wikipedia "After graduating, Einstein spent almost two frustrating years searching for a teaching post,"

[vena]

Which is about 1/10th of what your post is implying. You might want to read something deeper than a wikipedia summary.

[azgolfer]

Peer review is neither necessary nor sufficient for science.

[vena]

And Einstein would possibly have agreed with that to some extent, as evidenced by his reply in 1936 to the rejection of the only paper of his ever even subject to peer review, even then a new concept in fields unrelated to medicine. This has literally nothing to do with his inability to find work after he graduated university or the hiring process of science institutions in general. This emotional argument doesn't just not reflect Einstein on any level deeper than a Wikipedia summary of a bio, but lacks any historical perspective as well.

Einstein's 1905 works, specifically the Annus Mirabilis papers, lacked the formal review process we understand today, but were certainly reviewed by the two Nobel prize-winning physicists who selected them for publication in their journal. The formal review panel concept simply did not exist at the time outside of the medical fields, but that is not to say there was no stringent editorial control or gatekeeping in physics journals, and certainly not in Annalen der Physik. If anything, Einstein was subject to a far less fair and inclusive process.