Michael Nielsen has posted a longish article entitled “Three myths about scientific peer review”. It’s thought-provoking reading and will strike a chord with most researchers. He uses various examples from 20th-century science and before to question our assumptions about how the system works (and how well). There’s apparently a follow-up about the future of peer review, and a book, on the way.
Interestingly, many scientists will be happy to use the rigourous nature of peer review to defend science against its critics, or to demarcate ‘real’ science from its fringe elements and impersonators, yet almost all will also have stories of the peer review system letting them down, or not being all it’s cracked up to be.¹ Perhaps it’s like adversarial party democracy — the least bad of all the current alternatives.
Andrew.
¹ N.B. I have no figures whatsoever to back up these claims.
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