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A comment on Stretching the “peer reviewed” brand until it snaps.

Re:Stretching the “peer reviewed” brand until it snaps by aet on Wednesday January 07, 2015 @01:23PM (#8852209)
I think the problem is with the publishing culture in some disciplines. For an example of a field in which peer review does not appear to be problematic consider finance/econ. In finance and econ you march you paper around to a number of different conferences. At AFA you even get a discussant that presents a critique after you present your work. After evolving the paper based on feedback from the conference circuit you eventually submit to a journal. At this point your work has been (hopefully) widely circulated in the community and is unlikely to be some piece of crap.

Contrast this with engineering. When you submit to a conference it has to be "new" work and you lose the copyright. It is a one shot deal. So, the benefit of feedback you might get on your work is basically irrelevant because that work in no longer publishable.

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Re:Stretching the “peer reviewed” brand until it snaps by padraic7a on Wednesday January 07, 2015 @04:02PM (#8853285)
I don't think that's always true however. Check out this example of an economist featured on Retraction Watch: http://retractionwatch.com/2015/01/05/anyone-want-hire-econo...

That said I do think the idea of a paper being produced after it has been toured around is a good idea - I wonder if it is appropriate for all fields though?

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Re:Stretching the “peer reviewed” brand until it snaps by hga on Wednesday January 07, 2015 @04:31PM (#8853441)
It can work for e.g. theoretical physics. But for anything involving serious extermination you've got to take the word of the researchers that they honestly did and reported it. At the most extreme example, experiments done with the CERN Large Hadron Collider are not easily replicated elsewhere at this moment ^_^.

It could also work for the explanation parts of experiment based papers, but, eh, you're allowed to be wrong there. Just publish enough of the data allowing others to double check your interpretation.

It is left as an exercise to the reader what other fields are known for withholding data, and the likely reasons why.

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