Perils of Peer Review
Perils of Peer Review
Your columns have carried considerable discussion of the privileged nature, or otherwise, of peer reviews of funding applications (for example, The Scientist, July 11, page 11). There has always been trouble in this direction—ever since Columbus failed to quote previous work by others in his field and omitted to submit 18 copies. More recently, in 1845, the British engineer J.J. Waterston, with an interest in mathematical physics, wrote a paper on the molecular theory of gases, which a