No subject

   Quoted:

     A few weeks back my husband and I watched the committee hearing and
     questioning, i.e. "hectoring" of those who were agin it, those who
     wrote the report you have copied in your blog. It was very
     interesting. I'm pretty intelligent and I don't have a PhD but my
     husband does, and he knows how to catch those who are lying with
     statistics. A lot of that went on in the hockey stick model. We
     both know that money in the form of grants is kept pretty close to
     small cliques of those who agree with each other, and they are the
     ones who "peer review" each others papers. They are the editors and
     reviewers of the journals to which those papers are submitted. This
     is a huge scam. Money and power are the name of the game in science
     as in everything else that goes on in this world. I am old enough
     to be really, really cynical about this.

     ...Ruth Hoese

   As I have noted to some of my friends who are scientists and who
   respect the peer review process: it's fine to respect peer review,
   which has many important strengths that should never be forgotten or
   ignored. But in the last 20 or so years we have reached a point where
   "peer review" doesn't just mean that your peers review your research
   before you publish it, which is a good idea. "Peer review" has also
   come to mean that your peers also control the government grants that
   are awarded to you, or denied to you. And worse, the "peers," in too
   many areas of science, are so specialized that often it means that
   even though it's supposed to be anonymous, in truth everybody
   important knows everybody else, and tends to recognize each other's
   work implicitely.

   The biggest reforms I can think of to help alleviate the situation,
   assuming we want government to keep funding research (which I
   certainly do) would be to implement some of the changes in the Wegman
   report: require the grant committees to always be multi-disciplinary,
   and not just the people involved in the narrow area of research the
   grant is for. Require independent mathematicians, statisticians, or
   epidemiologists to review the applications whenever possible. I'd add
   one other requirement: currently the peers and their comments are kept
   "anonymous" in their comments on any grant application, but to keep
   transparency I would suggest that after something like 2 years all of
   the peer reviewers are published with their names in full associated
   with their comments, so that there is some actual accountability.

   My friend Peter Duesberg wrote on this very issue in his 2003 paper,
   and I think it very valid here:

     little known practice of governments to deputize their authority to
     distribute funds for research to committees of =E2experts=E2. These
     experts are academic researchers distinguished by outstanding
     contributions to the current establishment. They alone review the
     merits of research applications from their peers, and they have the
     right to elect each other to review committees. Outwardly, this
     =E2peer review system=E2 appears to the unsuspecting government and
     taxpayer as the equivalent of a jury system =E2 free of all conflicts
     of interest. But, in view of the many professional and commercial
     investments in and benefits from their expertise, and even of the
     rewards from their universities and institutions for the
     corresponding overheads and partnerships =E2 all legal in the US
     since president Reagan =E2 =E2peer reviewers=E2 do not fund applicatio=
ns
     that challenge their own interests (Duesberg 1996b; Lang 1998;
     Zuger 2001). Since =E2peer review=E2 is protected by anonymity, does
     not allow the applicant personal representation or an independent
     representative, nor a say or even a veto in the selection of the
     =E2jury=E2, and does not allow an appeal, its powers to defend the
     orthodoxy are unlimited. The corporate equivalent of academia=E2s
     peer review system=E2 would be to give General Motors and Ford the
     authority to review and veto all innovations by less established
     carmakers competing for the consumer.

     Even the professional journals and the science writers of the
     public media comply with the interests of government-funded
     majorities because they depend on their monthly =E2scientific
     breakthroughs=E2, the lucrative advertisements from their companies,
     and the opinion of their subscribers. For example, an early
     precursor of this article was written in response to an open
     invitation from a pharmacology-journal over 3 years ago. But, after
     considerable pressure on the journal from anonymous =E2AIDS experts=E2,
     the editor requested a reduced article, which was neither accepted
     nor rejected. Instead, the editor simply dropped all further
     correspondence. Subsequently, the editor of a prestigious
     German-based science journal invited another precursor of this
     article 2 years ago, which received two favourable reviews in short
     order. But before the manuscript could be revised, the editor
     informed us that the publisher was concerned about losing
     subscribers if our paper were published and ceased all further
     correspondence. It is this passive resistance that can grind down
     even the most determined truth seeker.

     However, the mere potential to resolve the agony of AIDS by
     alternative hypotheses, such as ours, should be sufficient reason
     to replace the medieval =E2peer review system=E2 by a modern jury
     system without conflicts of interest and with rights for
     representation and appeals of the applicant. If the current,
     unproductive AIDS establishment objects, because AIDS-science is
     too complex to be understood by non-HIV-AIDS scientists, funding
     should be withheld until the AIDS establishment finds ways to
     explain the complexity and merits of its expertise to other
     scientists.

   Peter may be wrong about AIDS, but no one can doubt that this National
   Academy of Sciences member has in his lifetime turned in some
   incredible research, and a number of the world's foremost cancer
   researchers now think that he is onto a theory of carcinogensis that
   may be the most important breakthrough in the last 100 years (and that
   is not hyperbole). Yet he cannot get funded for any research except
   through private grants--which, while some libertarian-oriented
   thinkers may think is proper, is just stupid, because most research
   these days is in fact government-funded. And if we're going to keep
   funding research through government funds, we should at least have a
   greater transparency and more independence in this granting process,
   should we not? What we're doing now makes no sense at all.