Peer review, the system whereby scientific and scholarly work is subjected to the scrutiny of other experts in the field, has long been cherished as a guarantor of academic rigour. But today it appears to be in something of a crisis. Recent controversies have included the retraction (12 years after publication) of Andrew Wakefield’s peer-reviewed paper suggesting a connection between the MMR vaccine and autism, the ‘Climategate’ scandal involving emails between climate researchers appearing to manipulate peer review to their advantage, the assertion by eminent stem cell biologists that a clique of reviewers has been blocking the publication of quality research, the ‘Glaciergate’ incident in which the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change was taken to task for predicating its assertions on non-peer-reviewed ‘grey literature’, and the acceptance of a hoax paper from the ‘Centre for Research in Applied Phrenology’ (CRAP) in the peer-reviewed ‘Open Information Science Journal’.

Obviously peer review has never been infallible, but it has been trusted as the best mechanism for maintaining impartiality in research. This is now challenged. Some critics have argued peer review is merely a socially-constructed smokescreen for objectifying science, a cover for commercial and ideological interests. Others complain that while peer reviewing must depend on the collaboration of a community of experts in a given field who are committed to impartiality, inevitably subjective criteria enter the process and distort what passes for peer-reviewed science: Phil Jones, the central figure in the Climategate scandal, promised to keep two research papers out of the IPCC report. ‘I will keep them out somehow – even if we have to redefine what the peer-review literature is’. With the best will in the world the individuals who constitute a ‘community of experts’ are often asked to review and referee their friends, competitors, sometimes even their rivals. Some critics argue that one of the most disturbing threats to the integrity of the peer-review system has been the growing influence of advocacy science and the implicit pressures to provide evidence to fit in with policy objectives. In numerous areas, whether concerning climate or drugs, research has become a ‘cause’, increasingly both politicised and moralised. Conversely, the same trends have turned peer review into a ‘last word’ source of authority, silencing contestation not only over scientific facts, but over what are in fact political disputes. From this perspective, voices which lack the authority of peer review are, by definition, illegitimate. Politicians frequently wave peer-review at those who challenge their evidence-based policies on everything from behavioural economics to our individual lifestyles.

Does peer review need to be amended, or should we adjust our expectations of what peer review can achieve? Can we uphold peer review without creating the impression that if something is published in a peer-reviewed paper this automatically makes it ‘true’? Is the ideal of a pursuit of truth, free from vested interests, realisable or even desirable?

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