To be fair to Seife, it is getting harder and harder to find sufficiently qualified scholars who are willing to review scholarly papers, and as this becomes more difficult the quality of peer review is probably declining.
I'm just tired of the Times misrepresenting the peer review process.
@ct_bergstrom Did you read the linked report in the NYT piece? I’ve never done this or heard of it, nor apparently have you, but the linked report suggests the author isn’t just making it up.
@donaldcclarke Interesting. The link seems to be a subsequent addition, presumably in response to criticism. It was not there in the version I read. I'll take a look.
@ct_bergstrom I’m an editor on an academic journal. I assign reviewers. That has literally never happened on a single one of the manuscripts I’ve overseen.
@jaybaltz@ct_bergstrom not trying to be confrontational, I’m genuinely curious: how did you determine that none of the reviews you got back were done by grad students?
@li5a@ct_bergstrom I generally know who I’m assigning. Also, they have to sign that they haven’t shared it with anyone else, or if they discussed it, they have to say with whom. They are permitted to share reviews with postdoctoral fellows (not students), but it would be fraudulent not to specify that. 1/2
@li5a@ct_bergstrom We get occasional reviews that aren’t very good. But those are usually cursory. When a trainee does a review of something, then telltale sign is usually that it’s too detailed and overly picky, focusing on details instead of an overall assessment . So I’m pretty sure grad students aren’t behind any of the reviews I’ve gotten. 2/2
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