Peer Review Quotes

Even if individual researchers are prone to falling in love with their own theories, the broader process of peer review and institutionalized skepticism are designed to ensure that, eventually, the best ideas prevail.

Chris Mooney

Falling In Love, Ideas, Peers

"The Science of Why We Don’t Believe Science" by Chris Mooney, www.motherjones.com. May/June 2011.

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I love science. I hate supposition, superstition, exaggeration and falsified data. Show me the research, show me the results, show me the conclusions - and then show me some qualified peer reviews of all that.

Bill Vaughan

Hate, Data, Peers

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With my tongue in one cheek only, I'd suggest that were our palaeolithic ancestors to discover the peer-review dredger, we would be still sitting in caves.

Zygmunt Bauman

Would Be, Peers, Sitting

Source: www.theoryculturesociety.org

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If people are going to do post-publication peer review, they need to abide by the same rules as they abide by for pre-publication peer review: not being ad hominem, being respectful, giving the author a chance to respond in a reasonable way.

Susan Fiske

Giving, People, Way

"We talked to the scientist at the center of a brutal firestorm in the field of psychology". Interview with Rafi Letzter, www.businessinsider.com. September 26, 2016.

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Under true peer-review...a panel of reviewers must accept a study before it can be published in a scientific journal. If the reviewers have objections the author must answer them or change the article to take reviewers' objections into account. Under the IPCC review process, the authors are at liberty to ignore criticisms.

Richard Lindzen

Liberty, Criticism, Answers

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If you are doing a peer review of somebody's paper before publication, the editor would not allow you to speculate about the person's motives, about their place in the hierarchy. It's not scientifically relevant.

Susan Fiske

Editors, Peers, Paper

"We talked to the scientist at the center of a brutal firestorm in the field of psychology". Interview with Rafi Letzter, www.businessinsider.com. September 26, 2016.

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At the end of the day in business, it's not about peer review and getting into a scientific journal. You either increase sales, or not.

Guy Kawasaki

The End Of The Day, Peers, Increase

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Science advances by trial and error. When mistakes are made, the peer-review publication process usually roots them out. Cuccinelli's version of the scientific process would be "make an error and go to trial." Einstein did not arrive at E=mc2 in his first attempt. If he were working in the state of Virginia under Cuccinelli today, he could be jailed for his initial mistakes and perhaps never achieve that landmark equation.

Scott Mandia

Mistake, Roots, Errors

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I suspect that the peer-review system carries a good part of blame for the fact that something like sixty percent or more of journal articles are never quoted (which means leaving no trace on our joint scholarly pursuits), and (in my reception at any rate) the "learned journals" (with a few miraculous exceptions that entail, prominently, TCS) ooze monumental boredom.

Zygmunt Bauman

Mean, Boredom, Leaving

Source: www.theoryculturesociety.org

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Wikipedia took the idea of peer review and applied it to volunteers on a global scale, becoming the most important English reference work in less than 10 years. Yet the cumulative time devoted to creating Wikipedia, something like 100 million hours of human thought, is expended by Americans every weekend, just watching ads.

Clay Shirky

Weekend, Years, Ideas

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Science has a culture that is inherently cautious and that is normally not a bad thing. You could even say conservative, because of the peer review process and because the scientific method prizes uncertainty and penalises anyone who goes out on any sort of a limb that is not held in place by abundant and well-documented evidence.

Al Gore

Culture, Peers, Scientific Method

"Al Gore's views on climate change, extreme weather and Keystone XL". Interview with Suzanne Goldenberg, www.theguardian.com. November 14, 2012.

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In these unfiltered, un-moderated social media posts people are speculating about others' motivations. And you could no more put that in a peer review for a journal than you could fly.

Susan Fiske

Motivation, Media, People

"We talked to the scientist at the center of a brutal firestorm in the field of psychology". Interview with Rafi Letzter, www.businessinsider.com. September 26, 2016.

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There are, by the most conservative counting, two grave and deeply regrettable collateral victims of the peer-review gruesome stratagem: one is the daring of thought (wished-washed to the lowest common denominator), and the other is the individuality, as well as the responsibility, of editors (those seeking shelter behind the anonymity of "peers", but in fact dissolved in it, in many cases without a trace).

Zygmunt Bauman

Responsibility, Editors, Two

Source: www.theoryculturesociety.org

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...I can't see either of these papers being in the next IPCC report. Kevin [Trenberth] and I will keep them out somehow, even if we have to redefine what the peer-review literature is!

Phil Jones

Peers, Literature, Paper

"Climate change emails between scientists reveal flaws in peer review" by Fred Pearce, www.theguardian.com. February 2, 2010.

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In my more than 60 years as a member of the American scientific community, including service as president of both the National Academy of Sciences and the American Physical Society, I have never witnessed a more disturbing corruption of the peer-review process than the events that led to this IPCC report.

Frederick Seitz

Years, Community, President

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