It's easy to be critical of peer review as it is not perfect. There is NO perfect solution to the problem or we would already have it implemented.

Peer review is seen as the gold standard for publication of a scientific work, although peer review does not guarantee that the results of the paper are worthwhile (as we saw with both USGS reports) or even true.

Ultimately, the editor of the journal has the final say about whether something is published. In fact, the people who peer review an article can slam a study and criticize it all day long, and it doesn't guarantee that anything will change (it usually does though).

Here's a quote by the editor of "the Lancet", a well known, highly respected medical journal:
"The mistake, of course, is to have thought that peer review was any more than a crude means of discovering the acceptability — not the validity — of a new finding. Editors and scientists alike insist on the pivotal importance of peer review. We portray peer review to the public as a quasi-sacred process that helps to make science our most objective truth teller. But we know that the system of peer review is biased, unjust, unaccountable, incomplete, easily fixed, often insulting, usually ignorant, occasionally foolish, and frequently wrong."

So like I said, it's not a perfect system. But, there's nothing better so far....

jb
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What's written above is purely my opinion. In fact, MOST of what you read on the internet is someone's opinion. Don't take it too seriously

Jonathan Brady
DeviantConstrictors.com
Deviant Constrictors picturetrail

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