PEER REVIEW

The best the enviros are managing to do in reaction to the fact that they are being buried by a blizzard of signatures by scientists opposed to their agenda is to carp about the lack of "peer review'' of our review paper (for reasons of time and copyright).

Actually, reviews are often not peer reviewed at all, since they do not contain original research and do contain complete references to the peer-reviewed literature for all of their data - as is true of our paper. The most cited paper that I have ever written was a review article that stood as the primary reference in a specialized area of protein chemistry for more than 20 years. This paper was never peer reviewed.

Peer review arose - and still functions - as a mechanism for journal editors to reduce the number of submitted manuscripts to that number which will physically fit into their journal. It consists of sending each manuscript to two or three other scientists who give opinions, usually anonymously, as to its quality. Many manuscripts are objectively assessed in this way. If, however, the editor wants to publish the paper regardless, he simply selects reviewers known to be friends of the author or else known to be lenient in their opinions. If he does not want to publish the paper, he sends it to the author's enemies and competitors or to reviewers known to harshly criticize all manuscripts.

Since new ideas are often less popular, they are more difficult to publish. There are a very large number of journals, however, so most worthwhile work is eventually accepted somewhere. For many years, as a help in ensuring this, the Proceeding of the National Academy had a policy of accepting any manuscript approved by three members (one submitter and two others of his choice). Unfortunately, this PNAS policy was abandoned as a result of an argument over the controversial submissions of one academy member. Peer-reviewed publication has actually become very easy, however, because there has been a virtual explosion in the number of journals - in large part as a response to the need for scientists to accumulate long lists of publications in order to compete successfully for tax-financed grants.

In any case, peer review usually consists of opinions by two or three other scientists. A paper with four authors and no reviewers has the approval of as many scientists as a single-author paper that has been peer reviewed.

Mediocre scientists, when reading the literature, often use peer review in an unintended way. They depend upon the reviewers to evaluate the work, and they read just the abstract and conclusions of the paper. They trust and parrot - by citing this superficially evaluated work in their own papers. Excellent scientists do not do this. They read the paper, check critical references, and reach their own conclusions.

Although signature of our petition does not prove that the signer approves our review paper, there is a partially implied link. In that case, our paper has certainly passed peer review by more scientists than any other scientific paper that will be published in 1998.

•	The "Consensus" is Dead
•	SCIENCE AND ADVOCACY
•	*PEER REVIEW*
•	FIELD OF SPECIALIZATION
•	STARK RAVING MAD
•	GOOD READING

Vol. 25, No. 8

Newsletter: Access to Energy Newsletter Archive
Volume: Issues
Issue/No.: Vol. 25, No. 8

Date: April 01, 1998 03:52 PM
Title: The "Consensus" is Dead