July 23 at 6:20 am
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j1m, Duncan Hull, Mr. Gunn and 5 other people liked this
Nature introduced their formal peer review system in... 1967! - Michael Nielsen
Via http://friendfeed.com/hspencer - Michael Nielsen
I'm becoming tempted to say that peer review is so NEW and untested that perhaps it should not be used :) - Jean-Claude Bradley
JAMA has some great special issues devoted entirely to peer review (one every four years back to 1990). Overall, the evidence that peer review helps more than it hinders is thin. Amusingly, some of the articles say "Well, we found little evidence that peer review helps, but we still think it's essential." Okay... - Michael Nielsen
I find it striking that the peer-review system (and the review system for peer-reviewers) was introduced to solve a backlog and clearance of submissions problem. We may be seeing a problem on the order of "be careful what you measure for ... " - Dennis E. Hamilton
via twhirl
Dennis - One of the histories of peer review that I've read says that the emergence of peer review was in part motivated by the invention of carbon paper (1890s, apparently), and the invention of the Xerox machine in the 1950s, for the reasons you describe. I don't recall the reference, unfortunately. - Michael Nielsen
Michael - I'd love to see this history. If you have time, could you dig up a reference for that? - Jere
it is possible that peer review only works under the special circumstances of the past 50 years - in the future as the volume of data outpaces the ability of humans to adequately process it will end up as a blip in the science history books - Jean-Claude Bradley
Jere - Unfortunately, I don't recall the reference. If you look in the JAMA issues that I reference elsewhere in my del.icio.us bookmarks, you'll find several articles which are just histories, though, and many more articles which give capsule histories. It was likely one of those. - Michael Nielsen
"In the future as the volume of data outpaces the ability of humans to adequately process it ..." In the future? The volume of data I want to process on a daily basis outpaces my ability! - Walter Jessen
Walter - I agree that the time of overwhelm (for the reviewers) could be argued to be already here but the scientific community has not yet cried uncle - Jean-Claude Bradley
This seems like a promising history from JAMA - I'll read it tonight: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pu... - Jere
Jere - that was one of the histories I read, so it's possible that's the source. - Michael Nielsen