Facilitating Well-Founded Criticism of Established Scientific Paradigms

This is a preliminary editorial of a publication platform “_Well-Founded Extraordinary Science_”. It describes the problem this medium is meant to solve and presents the attempted solution. Scientific innovations often struggle to pass through peer review and regularly fail under certain circumstances: In its theoretical aspects, science is believed to progress through criticism and falsification, but where a dominant theoretical framework is established, expert reviewers practically only allow its _completeness_ to be questioned. Falsifications are frequently bypassed by ad hoc modifications. Criticism, even if fatal, can be turned a blind eye. This blocks fundamental scientific progress. An article about cosmology with published reviews highlights this issue. There, a critical evaluation is suppressed despite evident contradictions in the standard approach. As a countermeasure against similar cases, this open access medium with published reviews promotes epistemic progress by challenging established wisdom. It accepts only well-founded studies that go against established assumptions, theories or methods. Besides criticism of established paradigms, it promotes innovations or ‘revolutions’ that are well-founded and parsimonious. Reviewers are guided to check each claimed deficiency and innovation, whereby their confirmation bias is bridled. It is acceptable to present criticism without elaborating innovations and innovations without elaborate criticism of the established framework.