Guest essay by Abzats.
The most exciting period in science was, arguably, 1895-1945. It was marked by discoveries that changed the foundations of modern science: X-rays, quantum mechanics, superconductivity, relativity theory and nuclear energy. Then, compare this with the next 50 years in science. Incomparable. Nothing of that scale or impact. Yes, technology has advanced, but fundamental science – has come to a crawl. Have you ever wondered why? What changed as the 20th century grew older? Among other things, research budgets and the number of PhDs increased exponentially. This cannot be bad.
Well, it can. All depends on the rules of the game. And they have changed. The change went largely unnoticed by the general public. In this article I will try to bring everyone up to speed. I will explain to non-scientists the “business model” of modern science. People may want to know. After all, scientists are burning public money, billions a year. And, I am quite sure, those who get my message will react with “you cannot be serious!” And leaders of organized crime will be pulling their hair out in despair: “why did not we think of this first?”
Single most important element of the modern science machinery is the peer review process. It was introduced a long time ago, but it took over the scientific community at about mid 20th century. Why is it important? Every scientist must publish his or her work. If you do not publish, you will not advance your career. This works the same way as it does, say, for a businessman – if you cannot close a single deal, you are finished. Most journals have adopted peer review policies. Peer review process is also standard for research grants competitions. It is also the foundation of the tenure and promotion process at universities.
Well then, what is it exactly? To save time, let me explain peer review of papers submitted for publication in scientific journals. Once a journal receives a manuscript the journal sends it to 2-3 reviewers, who are experts in the field. Each reviewer writes a report that includes a recommendation on whether or not the manuscript should be published and advice to the author on how the manuscript can be improved. So far so good. Nothing seems wrong. This should work wonderfully. Well, in theory only. In reality it does not. In reality it is more of a disaster.
Let me explain. All the reviewers are anonymous. That is, they know your name but you do not know theirs. This is the first red flag: unless you plan to do something really bad, why do you insists being anonymous? The second red flag is that none of them gets paid. Those who believe in Santa Claus will say, well, they are just nice people volunteering their time to help advance science. Those who work for a living will smell a rat. I can give you one reason: being a reviewer gives you power over other people. Some just enjoy it, others use it to advance their own agenda. Such as approve manuscripts that praise reviewer’s own research and reject those that criticize it.
The power reviewers have is enormous. Put yourself in author’s shoes. You worked hard for six months on a manuscript. Your work is brilliant, if you publish it, not only will you advance your career, it will make you a leader in the field. Then, the manuscript goes to a reviewer who just happens to be having a bad day. He browses through the manuscript for 20-30 minutes, does not like the name of the author (never heard of him, “wrong” ethnicity, or … whatever), and rejects the paper. Can you appeal? No. You can write an angry letter, but you cannot call your attorney. Because nobody is breaking the law. because there isn’t any.
They can ruin your career and drive research, often funded by the public, to a dead end, and they are not accountable to anyone. In such a system, for most scientists the best, or should I say the only, way to advance their careers is by kissing up to those in higher positions: in person, in manuscripts, and in the whole research strategy. This has been going on for decades. As a result of this “natural selection”, the scientific community has been consumed by cronyism. Parts of it are rotten to the core.
Let me give you one example. Last year I attended a Radiation Research Society meeting. It was held in Maui, Hawaii. Why? Obviously it is a great spot for a vacation. You will not find any major research centers in the neighborhood. If you are still thinking of defending this choice, get this – the conference was held at the Grand Wailea Resort. The thing about this place is that luxury here is obscene. It is a kind of place a bum would go to after winning a lottery. And, guess what, I believe I have seen a few. Never before had I seen an invited speaker at a major conference making bodily function jokes. Here I had seen more than one, including a recipient of a lifetime achievement award spelling a word for body waste and thinking it was funny. Do not get me wrong, I am not judging here. But, if he jokes at a preschooler level, would you trust him to be a reviewer of your work? Do I need to mention who paid for the event? Or, that it took place during the worst economic crisis in decades?
A couple of other problems. Reviewers have no real motivation to work fast. Here is what you would see when checking status of your manuscript on a journal’s web site: manuscript to referee, unable to report – sent to another referee, and so on, several times, for weeks and months. Nonsense. With all the technology available, a manuscript can be published within hours. But, no, it has to sit for weeks on somebody’s desk. Somebody who just does not care enough. Or, worse, someone who is interested in delaying the process. The reviewer may be working on exactly the same problem and wants his paper published first.
Another problem that extremely frustrates me as an author are suggestions reviewers make on how I should improve my manuscript. Originally, may be, it was a good idea – your peers offering you advice that will help you improve your work. But it all has gone very wrong. These days these are not suggestions or advice – these are demands. You change your manuscript exactly as you are told, or it will be rejected. I am a well established scientist, why do I have to take advice from someone who would not even reveal his identity or credentials? And, finally, this system is perfect for stealing ideas. After you submit your manuscript you have no control of who will access it. All you can hope for is human decency, and it is not always there.
This brings us to the root of the problem. People, including scientists, are flawed. Few will miss a chance to stab competition in the back and abuse whatever little power they may have. I am not the first to criticize the peer review process. But I am not. Criticizing implies it can be fixed. It cannot. It was a bad idea all along. Then, what can be done? There is no quick and easy solution.
But I know where to start – ban peer review. And I know this can be done, this nonsense can be dealt with. This is not brain surgery, this is all about leveling the playing field, making rules for fair and open competition. These problems have been solved in all other spheres. Only scientists for whatever bizarre reasons received a special treatment and the right to live in lawlessness. Which is so wrong, I cannot find words to describe. Science is one most important sphere of human activity.
Who will find cure from cancer? Who will prevent the planet from becoming uninhabitable? Scientists. Not those from the beaches of Grand Wailea. Real ones. I hope we can still find some and reverse, before it’s too late, the depletion of brains. Let’s get started. Ban peer review!
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Wow. I cannot help but agree. Where does WUWT find these geniuses?.
Interesting essay. Clearly, an overhaul of the process is in order. Is the scientific community up to it?
Kurt in Switzerland
Rubbish. Wrong, wrong, wrong, Mr Abzats. I recommend this essay is completely re-written to state “peer review is brilliant and should remain anonymous” in order to make it fit for publication.
I don’t think its that simple. If there is no peer review, how can you prevent creationists and people with a perverse agenda, such as promoters of fake medical treatments, from flooding credible journals with junk science? I agree the current system is broken, but I don’t see how having no system is a viable replacement.
I’m not sure that Crick and Watson, and those who came after them in molecular biology, would agree that nothing occurred after 1945!
Reblogged this on CraigM350.
It’s possibly an extension of the Yes Minister tv show approach from the 70s & 80s. I’ve voiced this here in the past. Two top civil servants are discussing a new potential government appointee t head up a new government department, over an slap up lunch of course, (at taxpayers expense). The new candidate must be knowledgeable in his/her field. They must of course be sound. They must of course be dynamic. The must of course have leadership, team players, etc. Finally, hay must be sympathetic to the guvments views on …………..! Fill in whatever you wish. The rot starts from the top down, always does! That’s how it works in the UK. The job frequently goes with a gong, usually a knighthood/Damehood, all Guvment Chief Scientists/Medical Advisors et al, all get them as part of the job description.
Eric – surely the point is that the current method does not prevent junk science from flooding the journals. In fact, it appears to give it credence due to the “pal-review” process it has gone through. Allowing papers to be published un-censored would open the thinking up to a far wider, and possibly smarter, audience, rather than an elite few with the power to control the dissemination of words and thoughts.
The essentials of this article are exactly correct. The poop jokes are a bit unfair, but the peer review process is completely broken and used by the reviewers to push personal theories and agendas. Unfortunately, the article misses the other corrupt part wherein funding is driven by those same powerful reviewers on editorial boards.
You havent proposed a system to replace it.
Might I suggest reforming it. ?
I would also add that in some instances, scientists also control access to equipment and data to begin with, and if you don’t get that access, for whatever reason, you can’t even write something to begin with, let alone publish it. But access to equipment and data should be mandatory, I have seen instances where this does not happen, for all the wrong reasons.
And also, even if you have access, they also may control who gets interviews and invited to jobs. Guess what happens if you aren’t like them, or liked by them, for whatever reason?
I would actually agree that this sort of rotteness crosses over to criminal at times, the only way to improve such as system is to introduce mandatory reforms and standards, I don’t see any other way.
“But I know where to start – ban peer review.”
=============
To replaced by………what?
Consensus ?
—
How about “ban” press releases ?
It might slow down some of the stupid policy decisions being made.
The operative word being “stupid”.
I’d say the whole grants system is at least a big a problem. Rife with cronyism, political correctness and highly politicized.
But I agree anonymous peer review also stinks. A better system would be provisional publication on the internet with comments. Which gives the authors the chance to amend, and journal editors the opportunity to decide if the paper is good enough to go forward to formal publication and be a referenced paper.
With the incidental benefit of reducing the amount of vague and ambiguous writing in scientific papers.
A somewhat one sided perspective. I have worked for two journals and published many papers and I have to say that I have never found it to be that way.
I agree – get rid of peer review. Sure there may be other problems crop up, but it cannot be worse than it is now with false science, stab-’em-in-the-back mentality and every scientist frightened to speak his or her mind until after retirement! It has led to exactly this situation with the greens screaming CAGW and barely a soul on the premises willing to stand up and refute them.
Not having a perfect solution doesn’t mean having to put up with what is clearly a massive problem.
Get rid of the big problem, then sort things out from there.
It might be worth ditching a few of those scientific associations, academies, whatever, while you’re at it. If it’s corrupted, get rid of it. step away from it, start over. The cancer that has invaded science has become terminal. Sooner or later individuals are going to have to make a choice, for one side or the other, and not pretend to be invisible, hoping the maniacs will go away. They won’t. Any scientist pretending it’s not their problem, know this: That’s part of the problem!
Start fresh. Start with integrity and true science will follow. Not only that, but true scientists will be thrilled to find a clean establishment to get on with science. If scientists don’t do this, there’s no one who will.
Unsubstantiated, speculative, poorly researched, poorly thought through. Joe public blogging at it’s worst.
Current “fundamental science” is doing just fine. It’s recently confirmed the last piece of the standard model puzzle, a rover is working away zapping rocks on Mars to figure out if it once harboured atmosphere, water and life. Medical science is delving deeper into the neurological mysteries of the brain, complete genome sequencing is now possible, we’re now detecting planetary systems around other stars, learning more about black holes, dark energy, dark matter, everyone has a GPS enabled , mini computer/phone in their pocket.
Bets of all, the claims in the story are backed up by….an anecdotal story of someone once telling a fart joke at a conference. Please.
Peer review – or pal review, as it is better known in alarmist ‘climate science’ – is essentially the way the Establishment keeps their version of science orthodoxy in place.
New idea, interpretations and concepts are frowned upon, treated as heresy, and usually rejected, which is the reason so few sceptical research papers get published.
It is very much like the way Holy Mother Church used to act back in the 15-17th centuries.
People tend to forget that government funding of research is itself a new thing – and a bad business model. It is nearly impossible for government bureaucrats to lose their jobs, no matter how inept they may be. There’s next to no negative feedback in the system to “keep it on track.”
Its hard to see an alternative without a degree of peer review since only those knowledgable in a field can really assess a paper. And the possibilities for abuse and cronyism are always inherent in peer review. Its a grass-roots problem and there may be some – maybe partial – grass-roots solutions:
– Scientists could publish online the review correspondence from their papers for all to see – as well as free download of the pdf.
– Boycott Elsevier, Wiley, and the other big publishers who paywall their papers. These companies get 99% of their funding from tax-funded research but cream off fat profit. They can maintain reviewer anonymity behind a smokescreen of corporate legalese, the model suits them well.
– Publish in Open journals with free pdf download, from journals that are linked to publicly funded organisations (subject to FOIA).
– Then use the FOIA to demand transparency, reviewers should be identified
– Better yet, actively create open journals where all review correspondence is published along with the paper, with all reviewers identified, so all the world can read the review correspondence.
– Look also at the model of a journal like Nature which has full time salaried reviewers. These professional reviewers are not so subject to conflicts of interest like finding a competitor’s paper in front of them for review.
Chris M.
Eric – surely the point is that the current method does not prevent junk science from flooding the journals. In fact, it appears to give it credence due to the “pal-review” process it has gone through. Allowing papers to be published un-censored would open the thinking up to a far wider, and possibly smarter, audience, rather than an elite few with the power to control the dissemination of words and thoughts.
I’m not denying the faults of the current system. My concern is removing all filters will leave the field wide open to purveyors of trash science. Like Wyatt Earp once said, the one thing that is worse than a bad sheriff is no sheriff.
I think a better solution might be to encourage an evolution of journals. Let journals figure out their own filtering strategies. Scientists will select journals which have the better signal to noise ratio. Scientists who are dissatisfied with all existing journals can start their own.
Isn’t this more or less what WUWT represents? People (including scientists) who are dissatisfied with pal review, and have decided to give their time to other outlets?
With web-based “journals”, the readers can search through the papers so it doesn’t matter how many papers get published so if their junky it doesn’t matter. Next should the BS of prestige and citations. As the presence in a prestigious journal or the idiot citation of a paper say the paper is any better than any other- duplication is the surest method of science. Journal based peer review is an anachronism- from a time when publishing had to produce paper documents.
It is clear to many who care about the integrity of science that something has gone badly wrong. The club, the Team, the vested interests, whoever all play their part. The result is at best mediocrity. However, just plain wrong (as we have seen many times on this blog) can rule the day and grab the headlines: the damage is already done.
Several years ago an observation was made that excess heat (excess being defined as at a level beyond what was possible from known chemical reactions) was generated in an electrochemical cell. The fact that this observation was made by one of the leading electrochemists of his time did not stop the vested interests from burying this line of enquiry.
In a world where true science is pursued, this observation by such an eminent person should have sparked interest and enquiry. All that it did was to spark ad hominem attacks and statements from nuclear physicists that the observation was “not possible”. Experiments cobbled together in a few weeks “proved” that the observation was not true. The fact that the experiments leading up to the announcement had taken many years to refine did not come into the reckoning.
24 years after the initial furore, many small groups of true scientists around the world are still investigating this phenomenon. While there is no agreed theory as to why excess heat is generated, there is no doubt that it is there. It has been independently measured too many times for it to be discounted by anyone other than a believer in the ”not possible” camp.
There are many similarities between the anti-cold fusion camp and the warmists. The main one is to discount observation when it does not match theories, models, whatever. Another is the use of ad hominem attacks on those who dare to proffer an alternative point of view. The third is a main stream media so wedded to the status quo that it lacks the investigative zeal to look below the surface and recognise what is actually there. A fourth, possibly, is the hair shirt. No more fossil fuels, and all of the misery and deprivation that will cause, must be the way to save the planet. Put against that an energy source that could be cheap and carbon free. There is no sacrifice; the ACGW religion is without its foundation; it simply cannot be possible to save the planet that way.
What a sad state of affairs.
“X-rays, quantum mechanics, superconductivity, relativity theory and nuclear energy. Then, compare this with the next 50 years in science. Incomparable. Nothing of that scale or impact”
These are things at the foundations of the known universe. As more [genuine] foundations are discovered, the supply of new ones dwindles. Yet the scientist still wants to be ‘the one’ to find an earth shaking discovery, the fundamental that is causal. You see where I’m going with this?
The herd. Consensus. AGW. Notice that it is portrayed as earth-shaking. All-encompassing. Threatening…and the cause of everything from Buffalo Bunions to Dwarfism in Red-wattled Lapwings. And silently, behind the scenes, the stars of the show apply their ad hominem methods to cull the doubters, the free thinkers, the DISCOVERERS…while shepherding snidely mirthsome groups of sycophants and hockey-stick yes-men.
Their false claims (nobel laureates) and facebook adulation (same guy) are gut-wrenchingly petty and shallow….pleas for attention from presidents and kings.
Abolish it indeed.
Its a mixed picture, in some scientific disciplines peer review works extremely well. It is corrupted in fields that are subject to a political mandate to promote a falsehood. Your article correctly identifies radiation research as such a field. They are mandated to prove that all ionizing radiation exposure is harmful which is a patent falsehood, at doses less than about 25-50 mGy, the effect is either zero or positive (lower cancer, longer lifetime). But allowing even a small statistical harm at ultra-low microsievert doses is very potent politically since everyone in the world gets some miniscule dose from radiation releases. This is where the fictitious statistical kilo-deaths from e.g. Chernobyl and Fukushima come from – microdeaths times billions of people. Also of course climate science, mandated to prove that CO2 is the main driver of global climate when it in fact drives nothing – it is only a following index reflective of human input, ocean temperature and geological volcanism and weathering processes. Plus CO2 is good for plants which is good for everyone. But good news sells neither newspapers nor political agendas.
@Anthony: This article was a rant. It would never pass peer review because it lacks a testable hypothesis. I share the author’s frustration, but, there are many people proposing alterations to peer review who have more insight than Abzats. I don’t agree with Monkton on everything, but, why not get him to write the rebuttal to this article?
phlogiston says:
June 25, 2013 at 1:04 am
“- Look also at the model of a journal like Nature which has full time salaried reviewers. These professional reviewers are not so subject to conflicts of interest like finding a competitor’s paper in front of them for review.”
Nature, the journal, is owned by Germans.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georg_von_Holtzbrinck_Publishing_Group
Maybe you want a green romanticist ideology to filter your science, maybe not.
Another remark about science now vs. the 19th century.
The PhD is a Prussian invention. only in the mid 1800’s did Yale begin to offer PhD’s in the USA. Most American PhD students still traveled to Germany to make their PhD.
Is a PhD a good or a bad thing? I don’t know. But Maxwell or Faraday weren’t PhD’s.