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Peer Review is Fraught with Problems, and We Need a Fix

posted by n1 on Wednesday November 19 2014, @01:33AM   
from the peer-reviewed-study-confirms-it dept.

The Mighty Buzzard writes:

Phys.org is running a story on some of the issues with modern peer review:

Once published, the quality of any particular piece of research is often measured by citations, that is, the number of times that a paper is formally mentioned in a later piece of published research. In theory, this aims to highlight how important, useful or interesting a previous piece of work is. More citations are usually better for the author, although that is not always the case.

Take, for instance, Andrew Wakefield's controversial paper on the association between the MMR jab and autism, published in leading medical journal The Lancet. This paper has received nearly two thousand citations – most authors would be thrilled to receive a hundred. However, the quality of Wakefield's research is not at all reflected by this large number. Many of these citations are a product of the storm of controversy surrounding the work, and are contained within papers which are critical of the methods used. Wakefield's research has now been robustly discredited, and the paper was retracted by the Lancet in 2010. Nevertheless, this extreme case highlights serious problems with judging a paper or an academic by number of citations.

Personally, I've been of the opinion that peer review is all but worthless for quite a while. It's nice to know I'm not the only one who has issues with the process.

• Re:Censorship should be optional. (Score: 2, Insightful) by NotSanguine on Wednesday November 19 2014, @07:08AM

  by NotSanguine (285) <{NotSanguine} {at} {SoylentNews.Org}> on Wednesday November 19 2014, @07:08AM (#117550) Homepage Journal

  If you want to subject yourself to the censorship the moderation system provides, then you should have to voluntarily sign up and enable it for your account, and your account alone.

  Funny that. That's exactly what I do. I tend to browse at '-1' because I'm too lazy to change my settings every time I have moderator points. You can do that too.

  As someone who doesn't like censorship, why are you trying to foist your opinions and beliefs on everyone else and make them have the same experience that you do?

  Here comes one of my favorite quotes again:

  “The correct way to punctuate a sentence that states: "Of course it is none of my business, but -- " is to place a period after the word "but." Don't use excessive force in supplying such a moron with a period. Cutting his throat is only a momentary pleasure and is bound to get you talked about.” --Robert A. Heinlein

  Make of that what you will.

  --
  No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr

  Parent

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