The Epistemic Horizon of Peer Review: Spectral Compression, Prefrontal Isomorphisms, and the Artefact of Structural Collapse

Institutional peer review is conventionally formalized as an objective validity fil-

tration mechanism over the space of theoretical propositions. In this paper, we map

review dynamics onto a non-unitary sequence of linear compression operators, demon-

strating that theoretical suppression geometrically emerges as a compression artefact

strictly independent of the ontological validity of the theoretical core.

Synthesizing the Perron–Frobenius spectral framework [Ollervides, P7 ] with the

dual-channel epistemic model [Ollervides, P8 ], and structurally mapping to the pre-

frontal inhibitory control model (Miller & Cohen, 2001), we derive five mathematically

irreversible results:

(i) Epistemic Null Space: Identification of ker(TG) as the invariant blind-spot

of paradigmatic evaluation.

(ii) Bias Accumulation (Lemma 4.2): nsequentially biased evaluations drive the

Self-Reference Persistence Index (SRPI) to exponential collapse µ(n) ≤γ2n

min.

(iii) Perturbative Commutator Bound (Theorem 4.1): Relaxation of the strict

isometry condition mapping spectral drift to the Lie algebra commutator ∥[T,R]∥.

(iv) Distinguishability Criterion (Theorem 4.3): Genuine systemic instability

(GI) and biased suppression (BS) are observationally indistinguishable under

uniform compression bias (γ < 1). Resolution necessitates a neutral eigen-

operator (γ = 1).

(v) Merton–Spectral Theorem (Theorem 6.2): Formalizing the Matthew effect

as a spectral asymmetry, mapping an author’s citation matrix directly invariant

to the operator’s spectral ratio γ.

We delineate three falsifiable operational predictions. The theorems render the

deduction of structural invalidity from communicative rejection algebraically illegal.