Most scientific journals are "peer reviewed,'' which is another way of saying that those responsible for the journal ask other scientists to read the papers and make recommendations concerning their publication. The principal reviewers are usually designated as an "editorial board.'' These reviewers often receive a free subscription to the journal, and their names are printed in each issue. If they are well-respected scientists, this is a benefit for the journal as well. Although this system helps with publication quality, it is recognized to have serious flaws. Advertised as objective, it often favors those who are friends of the reviewers. Advertised as confidential, there have been many instances of reviewers using their positions to delay publication of work while they or their friends plagiarize the papers under review and rush into publication under their own names. Advertised as raising quality, it often suppresses the publication of innovative work that is not a part of current fad or fashion. There is an unwritten but very strong rule among scientists today to suppress public discussion of most instances of favoritism and outright scientific dishonesty. Tax-based appropriations of private earnings are used to pay a large proportion of scientists. Public discussion of scientific fraud might threaten to close this money spigot, so just a an occasional instance is publicized to give an erroneous impression that big-time tax-financed science is self-policing. The fad and fashion problem has historically been handled in various ways. For example, publication in the
So-called "peer review'' has also been adopted by the bureaucratic agencies that distribute tax money to scientists. Having confiscated the earnings of ordinary Americans against their will by threat of force, these people try to show how ethical they are by peer review of proposed research before it is funded. With money at stake, the problems endemic to peer review of publications are amplified.
Government funded research sinks, therefore, to the lowest common denominator of review committees of politically correct "scientists'' who seem to have nothing better to do than sit on government committees. Actually, many good scientists also waste their time in this way because reviewing the grant proposals of others is helpful in having one's own grant proposals approved. Favoritism, theft of ideas, and suppression of innovation are widespread in this process.
"AIDS Trials Take on Peer Review'' by Jon Cohen,
Science 271, pp 20-21 (1996), illustrates a further problem - composition of the review committees. With billions of dollars annually available from tax funds and the number of published papers approaching 100,000, AIDS may not be a single disease caused by HIV, and little progress may have been made in its pursuit, but it surely is big business in the government welfare system of grant-supported science.The squabble reported by Cohen relates to selection of the peer review committees. It seems that the committee members have not published as many articles on AIDS as have those being reviewed. Actually, in view of the sorry state of this field, it might be best to disqualify all reviewers who have published an article about AIDS.
A very outstanding colleague of mine once confided that he had almost lost grant support for his entire laboratory by making a strategic mistake. For the first time in his long and distinguished career, he had applied for a grant to do work that he had not already completed. The research turned out to be more difficult than anticipated, so he was unable to report success in time for the next review.
Dishonesty in grant applications is virtually a way of life in science today. Those who are entirely honest about their work are at such a competitive disadvantage that they are often not funded. The current system, therefore, expects scientists to be dishonest half of the time while they are writing grant proposals and then honest the other half of the time while they are conducting research.
Is it any wonder that the scientific literature is swarming with politically correct, intellectually dishonest articles while most good scientists, afraid of endangering their own grants, look the other way?
Peer review as such or under various euphemistic nom de plumes is also extending its tentacles throughout the American educational system and into general society.
In American universities, even in science, there is increasing use of group work and "peer review'' - the grading of one student by another. This has even extended to the ultimate idiocy of students grading the faculty - a very common practice which selects for professors who reduce the quality of their courses to the norms in order to prevent poor student grades from damaging their own careers.
In the public schools for students in grades 1-12, of course, group-think has become more important than reading, writing, and arithmetic. This social engineering to produce students that do not think independently and are easily molded to the political views promulgated by the state and by the political groups controlling the schools is essentially a peer-review process. Sociological peer-think in both grade schools and the universities is excellently described in "The Dirty War'' by Thomas Sowell,
Forbes, January 22, 1996 p. 66.Science, technology, and free enterprise are listed together on the
Access to Energy masthead for several reasons - one of which is that they are intrinsically linked in the human mind. Science and technology have advanced almost entirely on the shoulders of individual innovators - many of whom were opposed by their "peers.'' Those individuals, in order to make their contributions, needed freedom -intellectual freedom, economic freedom, and personal freedom.Peer review, government confiscation of economic and personal freedom, and the education of American youth in politically correct group-think are beginning to have a devastating effect upon our technologically-based civilization. American enviropolitics, loss of world economic and technological superiority, and loss of the individual freedom for which our country was established are the result.
A free man carries his only important "peer'' within himself in his own conscience. He must not be enslaved by external peer review.
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Vol. 23, No. 6
Newsletter: Access to Energy Newsletter Archive Volume: Issues Issue/No.: Vol. 23, No. 6 Date: February 01, 1996 01:59 PM Title: Peer Review
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