On Wed, 5 Apr 2000, Christopher D. Green wrote: > Although it is well-known among psychologists (it may not be so well-known > among others), there was actually an empirical study of the reliability of > peer review published in Behavioral & Brain Science in 1982. The system did > not come off very well. To quote the abstract: > > "12 research articles were resubmitted to the journals that had published > them 18-32 mo previously, with ficticious names and institutions substituted > for the original ones. Only 3 of the resubmissions were detected, and 8 of > the remaining articles were rejected--primarily for "serious methodological > flaws." Authoreviewer accountability is discussed, and recommendations for > improving the peer review system are presented. Commentary on this article > is provided by 56 authors along with the original authors'." > > Peters, Douglas P. & Ceci, Stephen J. (1982). Peer-review practices of > psychological journals: The fate of published articles, submitted again. > Behavioral & Brain Sciences. 1982 Jun Vol 5(2) 187-255
Although this is certainly true, and it is also true that peer review could stand with some testing, review, and eventual reform on the basis of the outcome, I have to reiterate that the objective of freeing the current peer-reviewed literature, such as it is, now, is completely independent of -- and should be kept independent of -- any future-contingent empirical program for the reform of peer review. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Prof. Stevan Harnad [email protected] Editor, phone: +44 23-80 594-583 Behavioral and Brain Sciences fax: +44 23-80 593-281 Department of Electronics and Computer Science http://www.princeton.edu/~harnad/bbs.html University of Southampton http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/bbs Highfield, Southampton ftp://ftp.princeton.edu/pub/harnad/BBS SO17 1BJ UNITED KINGDOM
