In their respective articles in the March 20, 1989, issue, Andrew Herxheimer (“Make Scientific Journals More Responsive—And Responsible”) and Murray Saffran [see above letter] are onto something important. We owe them and The Scientist a vote of thanks for articulating and publicizing it, and I hope it doesn’t end there.
We tend to think that science is what goes on in laboratories, and we turn the spotlight on the poor experimentalist every time there is a question of fraud, misconduct, or inadequate research standards. (Theorists are a little harder to get a handle on, but they too are under the .gun.) We question their data keeping, their statistics, their procedures, and their honesty. But the scientific process also includes editors, reviewers, and grant-givers, and these important components of the scientific process operate almost without rules or accountability. Herxheimer and Saffran have suggested some good first steps, but much more is ...
