Peer review under scrutiny

See:
Page Not FoundSee links within also.Don't have any comments right now.Moose

Interesting indeed. Unfortunatelly, I get the feeling that Hovind, et al. will jump on this.------------------

The article does not specifically say what is wrong with peer review. In my experience, peer review is a rigorous and highly critical process. If a paper does not make a strong case, it is unlikely to be published. There are cases however; where 'name' scientists can push through ideas without making a strong case because they have a track record of doing solid science. These 'fringe' ideas (for examply inertial interchange true polar wander) are then dissected by the scientific community and challenges are published later. Unfortunately, the news media surges around the initial claims and rarely reports on the detailed criticisms. If anything, there is a need to make sure the media publishes the cons rather than just the 'pros'. Many good science journalists do this, but many reports pay little attention to the cons.CheersJoe Meert

I get e-mail notices from the scientist.com, of which the cited is apparently related to. It seemed to be a good launch point for a micro-discussion on the peer review process. I really don't expect this topic will generate a lot of discussion (many of my topics are like that ).I would think that the peer review controversy may largely be specific to the medical industry. This is perhaps because the information can have such a "life or death" impact, and also perhaps because there's a lot of money to be made, or not made, based on the information.Moose[This message has been edited by minnemooseus, 02-04-2003]

For whatever it's worth, the topic is at Terry's Talk Origins
here.(We shall see if the system can handle those ultra-long urls)Moose

For what it's worth, my opinion is that science needs peer review. There are some other options available, but they all seem to have problems of their own.One option is for scientists to publish their work directly on the internet, on their own websites for example. However, you then have problems with locating the relevant information, and knowing whether it has any value (I came to this forum following someone who shares my name who published a complete load of nonsense as "science"). Very few scientists have the time to filter everything they read to spot errors. And also would the publishing scientist be diligent in putting links to rebutting articles on the site?Another option is to have unreviewed journals. Even on the internet these would need some form of editorial input, which will result in papers being rejected by an editor who may have no particular knowledge of the subject.Peer review allows scientists to take work done by other scientists and build on it or use it for other research without having to check every detail of that work themselves (naturally, there will be times when new research contradicts old papers, and so there will need to be critical reviews of both old and new work that needs to be done by a wider cross section of the scientific community than the usual peer reviewer or two).What are the problems with peer review. There are three that I can think of off hand.
1) The "big name" problem mentioned by Joe Meert
2) The problem, especially in small fields, of all potential reviewers personnally knowing the author of the paper. Which can work two ways adversely affecting the process - the reviewer could be a mate or a rival of the author.
One thing that could work to counter these problems could be anonymous authorship; the paper is forewarded to the reviewers with the names of the authors removed. A paper will then stand on the quality of the science alone. It could be said that you can never entirely disguise the identity of the authors if they're known to the reviewer - but then again the authors can often make guesses about the identity of the reviewers at the moment anyway.3) The "revolutionary idea" problem. Peer reviewers will have a tendancy to dismiss a radically new idea, it is only human nature. A radical idea will still need to be presented in a well written paper. And it is this class of paper that generally suffers from over exposure in the non-technical press.

A bit ago in another topic, Mammuthus mentioned the peer review process.I thought he might like to put some input into this topic.Mooseps. Technical Note: Adminnemooseus just did a "Update Threads" to get the forum name for this topic changed from "Miscellaneous Topics" to "Miscellaneous Topics in Creation/Evolution". Previous to that, the system would not let me post to it.

The more recent The State of Peer Review has picked up the theme, and has more good stuff in it.Closing the topic down.Adminnemooseus

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