Is the Peer Review Process for Scientific Papers Broken?
Time – MELINDA BALDWIN – Apr 29, 2014
If peer review is indeed broken, as some observers have claimed, an important part of fixing it may be adjusting our expectations of it. It seems a bit ambitious to ask any bureaucratic process to distinguish scientific successes from scientific mistakes with total accuracy. Scientific findings will always be questioned after publication and some will ultimately be rejected, including ones by excellent scientists. Although there are good reasons to solicit expert feedback on scientific articles before publication, the conversation about whether something is “real science” does not end when an article reaches print. Go to story
excerpt from Morning walk, Los Angeles, December 3, 1973:
Dr. WOLF-ROTTKAY: Because our senses are defective, the technological enlargements of our senses must also be defective, of course.
Dr. SINGH: The microscopes with which we detect things must also be defective.
PRABHUPADA: Material existence means defective existence. If you construct something with defective knowledge and imperfect senses, whatever you construct must be defective.
Dr. SINGH: Even if scientists devised a perfect microscope, they would still have to look through it with defective eyes.
PRABHUPADA: Yes. That is right. Therefore we conclude that whatever the scientists may say is defective.
