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Post by marchesarosa on Jun 11, 2011 16:51:16 GMT 1
Carrick on peer review on Climate Etc
...people in the climate community are so politicized that they are more interested in controlling the message to the public than they are in advancing scientific understanding.
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Post by marchesarosa on Nov 17, 2011 20:35:48 GMT 1
By Richard Smith, editor of the British Medical Journal until 2004 and director of the United Health Group’s chronic disease initiative. More on the uselessness of peer reviewI know I’m becoming a bore with all this raving against prepublication peer review, but like all true bores I’m charging on regardless. And I’m fired up by the experience I’ve had in the past few minutes. Unsurprisingly, I’m a hypocrite as well as a bore, and despite my protestations I do a fair bit of reviewing. I’m never quite sure why, but it’s something to do with the hope of getting an early peek at something stupendous. This has yet to happen. Anyway, I did recently agree to review for a journal of global repute and was given access to the paper. As is my custom, I downloaded the paper to read on a plane or train, and when I read it I thought that I must have downloaded only the summary. What I had was a sketchy piece with no argument, no data, no evidence, and, as far as I could see, no point. Assuming that I had only the summary, I contacted the editors—and was told that I had the whole article. I wrote a review that was nearly as long as the paper pointing out its deficiencies politely, making suggestions on how it could be improved, and giving references to two much better papers that covered similar ground. But why, I wondered, had the editors sent it out for review? Perhaps it was because of the prestige of at least one of the authors. Today I was sent an email telling me that the journal has made a decision and that I can access the other reviews. The paper has been rejected, but I see that the paper has had two other reviews—both saying in effect that what they had been sent was no paper at all. What a waste of time and effort. The authors should never have submitted the paper, the journals shouldn’t have sent it out for review, and we reviewers should have declined to review it. Failure all round. Recently a paper that I wrote with several others was reviewed by another journal of global repute. Again there were three reviewers (the Holy Trinity), and I’m not very unkind when I paraphrase their reviews as: Reviewer A: “Please reference my work”; Reviewer B: “Pay more attention to my specialty”; and Reviewer C “The authors should have written the paper in the gnomic language that I use.” These episodes remind me of my most fatuous peer review story. Years ago something I’d written was quoted in the American Journal of Public Health, but in my piece I was quoting work done by others. The original authors wrote to me and asked me to let the journal know that they had originated the idea. I was happy to do so and wrote a short letter for publication saying little more than “Thank you for quoting me, but X and Y first produced this idea and here’s a reference.” The journal wrote back saying: “Thank you for your letter, which will now be peer reviewed. If it passes peer review it will be published in nine months.” Barmy, I thought. This was peer review reduced to a mindless, bureaucratic, time and resource consuming charade—but maybe that’s what it is most of the time. blogs.bmj.com/bmj/2011/11/17/richard-smith-more-on-the-uselessness-of-peer-review/
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Post by marchesarosa on Nov 17, 2011 20:57:59 GMT 1
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Post by marchesarosa on Nov 17, 2011 21:00:26 GMT 1
Munroad on Bishop Hill stated bishophill.squarespace.com/blog/2011/11/17/richard-smith-peer-review-still-useless.html"I am a recently retired physician. I once submitted a case report (2 cases) for publication. The point of it was to illustrate the difficulty that can be experienced in distinguishing between tuberculosis of the small bowel and Crohn's disease (an inflammatory disorder of the gut). One reviewer said that it was obvious that these cases were TB all along and the other said it was obvious they were Crohn's disease all along. It was not published!" Nov 17, 2011 at 5:45 PM
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