If anyone is interested in thinking seriously about peer review --
what it is (qualified specialists vetting specialized work,
answerably), and what it is for -- rather than just opining randomly,
please do have a look at:
Harnad, S. (1998/2000/2004) The invisible hand of peer
review. Nature [online] (5 Nov. 1998), Exploit
Interactive 5 (2000): and in Shatz, B. (2004) (ed.) Peer
Review: A Critical Inquiry. Rowland & Littlefield. Pp.
235-242.
http://cogprints.org/1646/
Davis & Anderson's exposé was welcome, appropriate and timely. I hope
it will be repeated, over and over, with journal after journal,
whether OA or non-OA, new or old. D & A's certainly was not the first
such sting operation: Sokal's is well-known. But there have been
others before that too. They are all welcome and salutary, and their
only shortcoming is that they are too few:
Harnad, S. (ed.) (1982) Peer commentary on peer review: A
case study in scientific quality control, New York:
Cambridge University Press.
Peer-review practices of psychological journals: The fate
of published articles, submitted again
DP Peters, SJ Ceci - Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 1982
Cited by 289 - Related articles
Waiting for such exposés are not only prominent cases like
the Bogdanov Balderdash, the El Naschie Nonsense, and of course the
recent Pharmomercial scams. The price of reliable quality is constant
viglance.
Stevan Harnad
On 15-Jun-09, at 5:58 PM, Thomas Krichel wrote:
B.G. Sloan writes
Thomas Krichel writes: "...we all know that
peer review is a
vague concept to the point of being useless."
Really? I don't mean to sound naive or
skeptical. Can Thomas
Krichel point us to some empirical studies
that show peer
review is useless?
Can B.G. Sloan point us to some empirical studies that
measure
the extend of usefulness of peer review?
I have not studied the empirical evidence that is
formally
published. I have seen enough errors in peer reviewed
papers
personally but I can't spend my time elaborating here
where these
errors are. I don't think there is a need to do this.
"Peer
reviewed" means some presumed peers have reviewed the
paper. The
concept of a "peer" is vague. The concept of a "review"
is vague.
The combination of two vague concepts is even more
vague...
Cheers,
Thomas Krichel
http://openlib.org/home/krichel
RePEc:per:1965-06-05:thomas_krichel
new phone: +7 913 748 8056 skype:
thomaskrichel
Received on Tue Jun 16 2009 - 01:06:48 BST