In my previous genuine science post, I discussed the fundamental issues with science and science publishing, such as the fact that scientific research is not about the quality, but rather how much money corporations and scientific journals can earn, and how much fame certain researchers can gain. The problem with quality stems not only from scientists fabricating results to earn money for corporations. The quality of what we see as science is also poor because scientific journals, which should filter out bad studies through a process known as peer review, are failing to do so and, in fact, suppressing reviewers who stop such bad studies.
But first, let’s explain peer review. Peer review is the process by which scientific research, studies, or papers undergo review by other experts in the same field prior to publication. So basically, experts analyze what other experts do and decide whether it is good or bad. The thing is that experts who peer review are not paid. Yes, they do this hard work for free, despite the fact that, as you are aware, science journals collect money from scientists who wish to publish, money from corporations, and expect us to pay to read what is published. It means that a busy experienced researcher wouldn’t be able to do that. Most peer reviewers are younger, less experienced researchers, which has an impact on quality.
Older peer reviewers who do it solely for their resume frequently delegate this task to their doctoral and post-doctoral students. While those whose work is evaluated have no idea who the reviewer is, reviewers are aware of the scientists whose studies they are evaluating and where they work. It means that if the reviewer works in a competitive field, they may steal ideas or suppress research until they publish something similar. In science, being the first to publish a discovery is extremely important! The sad truth is that plagiarism is a common occurrence when it comes to academic work. When a reviewer is acquainted with the researchers being reviewed, their feedback may be positive or negative, depending on their personal preferences.
Bias in peer review is simply against the idea of peer review yet is well know dirty secret of science journals.
Moreover, there is yet another corrupt practice: journal editors publish in the same journals and receive immediate approval. The most apparent example of such scientific corruption had an impact on all of us. The so-called COVID PCR test study was published without proper peer review, and the author, Christian Drosten, is the editor of the journal The Eurosurveillance, where it was published. I and several other scientists condemned it as a blatant assault of science, used in even more heinous ways to impose the harmful COVID restrictions and so-called COVID-19 vaccines. The published RT-qPCR protocol for detection and diagnosis of SARS-CoV-2 (COVID) and manuscript contain numerous technical and scientific errors. Neither the presented test nor the manuscript itself meet the criteria for an acceptable scientific publication. Furthermore, serious conflicts of interest among the authors weren’t mentioned. *The background information is presented in the “Corman-Drosten report” which can be found in the references section of this article. Unfortunately, despite our efforts, the PCR test based on this study is still being used because the science publishing system is deeply corrupt.
So, peer review is a complete failure, obstructing research progress and preventing valuable findings from being published and applied by society. No matter how good a new study is, it will not be published if the researchers do not have extra money or are not well connected, or if there is a well-known researcher in the same field who is close to most editors or peer-reviewers, or if their research does not bring money to science journals or corporations.
Of course, I am not the only one who has noticed this and is calling for change. One of my scientist friends sent me an article by Dr. Peter Civan, a long-term peer reviewer who discusses the same issues. Here is an excerpt from his article. You can read the whole in the reference section here.
“The current model of scientific publishing benefits the business interests of publishers instead of the scientific progress. The system is beyond repair and needs to collapse in order to find a new, better one…..The publishers take advantage of a truly exceptional business model – a scientific manuscript is handled by an associate scientific editor (usually voluntary, i.e. unpaid), peer-reviewed by external reviewers (voluntary, unpaid), while the publisher usually recommends that authors use external paid services for language editing…. During one particular peer-review, I had a strong suspicion that the whole process (initial assessment of the paper, selection of reviewers; assessing their reports and the authors’ rebuttal and corrections; decision to accept/reject) was handled entirely by a technical assistant without scientific qualification instead of a scientific editor. I therefore contacted the editorial office and asked who was the scientific editor in charge of that particular manuscript. I received no response, and sent my request again. Silence. If my suspicion is correct, such bypassing of scientific editors could be a common and convenient practice of some ‘predatory’ publishers. I do not need to stress how unethical and damaging this could be for the process of scientific publishing. But in the absence of any oversight, how do we even know what practices are employed by those ever-expanding and profit-hungry businesses? With another journal and publisher, I reviewed a paper that suffered from biased sampling and analysed insufficient amount of data (in respect to the stated objective) with inappropriate application of bioinformatic tools. I argued this led to over- and miss-interpretation of the results. To my surprise, shortly after submitting my critical but measured assessment, I was locked out of the review process. I did not receive authors’ response, I could not read opinions of the other reviewers, and had no means to follow the fate of this particular manuscript. As far as I understand, I was removed from the evaluation process simply for submitting a negative review. On several other occasions, I received manuscripts with flaws and weaknesses that were deemed serious enough by the editorial offices to warrant rejection. Nonetheless, some time later, I came across those manuscripts published – in different journals – but in the same form that had previously been exposed as flawed and rejected….Are the papers published today as profound as they used to be decades ago, or have we simply succumbed to the unholy alliance of the profit-driven publishers and the ‘publish-or-perish’ incentives in academia? When these trends are viewed in the context of the reproducibility crisis, it becomes obvious that the current system of scientific publishing is broken….In my view, the deterioration in scientific publishing is in a large part due to the conflict of interest between for-profit publishing and a rigorous, meaningful, reproducible and accountable reporting of the scientific progress…. Personally, I like the idea that each research institution would have its own non-profit journal where all research of that institute (and only of that institute) is published. Such journals would serve as a reflection of the research quality at the particular institutes, creating pressure to filter out poor quality papers, and would naturally limit the distortions introduced by business interests. But the peer-review process also needs to be changed radically. It needs to be more rigorous, more targeted, transparent and accountable. The idea that two-three anonymous reviewers – possibly lacking relevant expertise and always without accountability – are sufficient to assess increasingly complex and methodologically sophisticated manuscripts that sometimes involve dozens of researchers and terabytes of data, seems more and more ridiculous.”
I know it’s a little long, but since most people are lazy and won’t check the reference, I’ve included the most important parts here. His suggestion that every science organization have their own publishing is a good one.
The core of the issue, which is not limited to science is that we must allow smart and genuine people to thrive. It is the only way to move forward rather than backward, as it is now. People who produce knowledge should not be poor, but we are. We are underpaid, if paid at all. We don’t want to be famous and would rather do our jobs in the small labs. I cannot express the joy and happiness of being alone in the lab conducting research and focusing on it. It was taken from me because my boss at the time did not fit into the anti-science narrative since was a genuine scientist. My career was simply collateral damage as the careers of many other scientists. Young scientists aren’t regarded as humans, but that is a subject for another discussion. My point is that everyone is affected by this, and everyone should work to restore genuine science. How? Educate yourself. My blog and substack contain an abundance of information. Speak up because corporations tell government officials which studies need to be funded, and your tax money is also used. Also, if you want me to continue and do more, please donate.
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If things continue as they are, people like me will perish and our civilization will collapse on its own.
REFERENCES
https://www.eurosurveillance.org/board
https://angelovalidiya.substack.com/p/lobbying-is-bribing-and-must-end
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