Some elements of science are an easier pitch than others. According to the old journalistic adage, people are predominantly interested in sex, death, and bodily functions, and science contains a pleasing amount of all three.
Besides which, there are the wonders of the universe. The mysteries of the human psyche. Dinosaurs and climate change and string theory and black holes and the incredible sonar superskills of bats. You don’t need a doctorate in particle physics to recognise that science sells itself.
Peer review, however, is apt to make non-specialists glaze over. If you’re not accustomed to how this particular sausage is made, the process of science seems less intrinsically interesting than its outcomes.
My scientist peers were well acquainted with peer review: it described a world they’d been immersed in for many years. For me, however, the internal politics of science seemed about as relevant or interesting as the wranglings of someone else’s family.
Luckily for the purposes of this blog post, I changed my mind. Here are five things about peer review which should make a non-scientist sit up and take note:
5) It’s controversial – If you like a good controversy, you should care about peer review. As this blog pays testament, the pros and cons of the system make it a great thing to debate.
4) There’s scope for scandal – Biases within peer review may well cast aspersions on the results. We ought to be very concerned about potential abuses. Cases such as that of Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg fully deserve the label ‘scandal’.
3) It affects discovery – Scientific discoveries do not happen in a vacuum. They’re affected by a whole matrix of factors. The internal politics of scientific communities have a large role to play in steering the direction of research.
2) It affects policy – There may be ramifications at the highest levels. Given how scientific research informs policy, it is vital that the methods of research be made as transparent as possible.
1) Science is the scientific process – Many people, when they think of science, think of a static body of facts. But science is not about giving answers; it’s about posing questions. We should care about the scientific process. We should care if scientists have vested interests or ideological allegiances or moneyed friends in high places, because ‘the scientific process’ is another way of saying, simply, ‘science’. And should we want further insights into sex, death, bodily functions and neutron stars, we can’t turn our noses up at that.
Image: A reviewer at the National Institutes of Health evaluates a grant proposal. From Wikimedia Commons
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