Peer review
The arbiter of scientific quality
Developments in science and medicine are frequently the subject of news headlines and public discussion. More scientific information is being put into the public domain and a growing number of organisations are becoming involved in promoting and discussing scientific research and reacting to new research claims.
With so much information it is often difficult to judge which research claims should be taken seriously? Which are ‘scares’? Sometimes scientists are reported as saying conflicting things. How do we know what to believe?
There is a system used by scientists to decide which research results should be published in a scientific journal. This system, called peer review, subjects scientific research papers to independent scrutiny by other qualified scientific experts (peers) before they are made public.
Over one million papers about scientific research are published in scientific journals worldwide annually. Despite its extensive use and recognition among scientists in assessing the plausibility of research claims, in the rest of society very little is known about the existence of the peer-review process or what it involves.
Sense About Science believes that peer review is an essential arbiter of scientific quality and that information about the status of research results is as important as the findings themselves. We have a very serious commitment to popularising an understanding of how scientific quality is assessed. To that end we have recently published a short guide to peer review. The guide was one of the key recommendations of our Working Party on peer review, which was established in 2002.
Last updated: June 22 2006
