Can we trust the peer review process?

Personal interests of scientists

To provide objective information, scientists must consistently be questioning each other.

Science is naturally objective in itself since scientists are constantly testing hypotheses and receiving facts about how the world works.

However, we live in a world of competition and sometimes even scientists can act out of their interests and not the interest of making sure science is progressing as best as it can.

Corruptness in the peer review process

In 2009 a collection of stolen emails from the Climatic Research Unit were brought to the internet.

When quoted out of context, these emails could have been portrayed to corrupt the objectivity of science for personal or political reasons.

An example of alleged behavior that may be identified as undermining scientific objective knowledge-building is when a small group of scientists was called out for attempting to hijack the peer-review process.

They were accused of altering this peer review process to promote a conclusion that they wanted to see because it would benefit them personally.

This undermines objective knowledge-building because for science to be as effective as possible scientists who agree with one another should not collaborate.

If scientists who are studying a certain case all happen to share the same beliefs then nobody would attempt to question said beliefs.

This will hinder science because when nobody asks questions about why something works then it will not progress in the most efficient way possible.

Another example that undermines objective knowledge-building is the fact that libel threats were made toward an editorial team specifically to disadvantage a certain company.

These alleged threats were made to benefit one company’s interests which is a bad way to conduct science.

This is bad because of how much it can hinder scientists’ potential to allow their studies to progress efficiently.

How to fix the peer review process

To fix this problem of corrupted peer review, we should first filter out the bad editors themselves.

The editors are the ones that will decide whether the article is legit or not, therefore it makes sense that we should allocate those who have no bias toward the subject they are reviewing.

However, this would not fix the problem of the scientists writing to the editors to persuade them to do something for their benefit.

The goal of the peer review process is essential to filter out people’s opinions on certain topics.

Therefore, when we have people trying to interfere with this process and corrupt it we are making science less objective.

Bottom line

When performed properly, science is naturally objective and generally free from people’s personal opinions.

However, this can’t completely stop scientists from attempting to persuade the general public otherwise for their benefit.

They can attempt to do this by corrupting the peer review process.

The whole point of this process is to make science even more objective but when corrupted it can result in the opposite.

Scientists can write to the editors and attempt to persuade them so that their company will benefit more from it.

When this occurs, the efficient development of objective knowledge-building suffers.