Peer review is not efficient with regards to time consumption. Peer review is highly subject to both personal and professional bias. The process can be a rather expensive way to verify research. These are all deficiencies that, while certainly problematic, are acceptable side effects of effectively reviewed work. However, from much of the ISP Fall reading collection, it is beyond reasonable to extract that the peer review process is not achieving that final goal effectively enough. Rather than the peer review process guiding an understanding of cases previously read and evaluated, a reexamination of those cases brings to light rather disturbing truths about the process itself.
The body of ISP readings has been centered on individuals and cases …show more content…
It is first important to note the large variation between the depths of the comments made by—and, thus, a variation between the rigor implemented by—Reviewer 1 and Reviewer 2 in the example. While this seems benign due to the quality of Reviewer 2’s remarks, the disparity could very well prove malignant if both reviewers responded as Reviewer 1 did, as Reviewer 1 provided little in the way of review or suggestions and this likely would have caused oversights in the review process, the types of oversights that allow ‘scientists’ such as Schön to publish work that lacks integrity and adequate science. Thus, as the potential for catastrophic oversights via peer review has been identified, the other deficiencies that the process does not address can be considered to result in an overarching conclusion; that peer review as it stands is ill-fit to do all it is asked to do. This is not to further weigh down scientists who do not have enough time to effectively review work—thus take months to do so inadequately—with all of the blame. Rather, the groups that enlist them should be …show more content…
Yet, the quality control that monitors their product—the science published in scientific journals—is essentially done on a volunteer basis. The process currently used is one that enlists highly bias individuals with personal stakes in results that, frankly, do not have the time to review work properly as the chief revisers of work, and it results in a high risk for inadequate science being presented as venerable fact in journals whose reputations rely primarily on a fragile balance of trust with society. The journals that make billions of dollars each year as a result of publishing work done by others need to take some accountability for strengthening the review process—perhaps tapping into their billions in surplus money to do so—or the difference between freely accessible, non-reviewed publications and established scientific journals will shrink, to the point that the latter holds little to no net advantage over the
The body of ISP readings has been centered on individuals and cases …show more content…
It is first important to note the large variation between the depths of the comments made by—and, thus, a variation between the rigor implemented by—Reviewer 1 and Reviewer 2 in the example. While this seems benign due to the quality of Reviewer 2’s remarks, the disparity could very well prove malignant if both reviewers responded as Reviewer 1 did, as Reviewer 1 provided little in the way of review or suggestions and this likely would have caused oversights in the review process, the types of oversights that allow ‘scientists’ such as Schön to publish work that lacks integrity and adequate science. Thus, as the potential for catastrophic oversights via peer review has been identified, the other deficiencies that the process does not address can be considered to result in an overarching conclusion; that peer review as it stands is ill-fit to do all it is asked to do. This is not to further weigh down scientists who do not have enough time to effectively review work—thus take months to do so inadequately—with all of the blame. Rather, the groups that enlist them should be …show more content…
Yet, the quality control that monitors their product—the science published in scientific journals—is essentially done on a volunteer basis. The process currently used is one that enlists highly bias individuals with personal stakes in results that, frankly, do not have the time to review work properly as the chief revisers of work, and it results in a high risk for inadequate science being presented as venerable fact in journals whose reputations rely primarily on a fragile balance of trust with society. The journals that make billions of dollars each year as a result of publishing work done by others need to take some accountability for strengthening the review process—perhaps tapping into their billions in surplus money to do so—or the difference between freely accessible, non-reviewed publications and established scientific journals will shrink, to the point that the latter holds little to no net advantage over the