Braun Tibor, Schubert András (szerk.): Szakértői bírálat (peer review) a tudományos kutatásban : Válogatott tanulmányok a téma szakirodalmából (A MTAK Informatikai És Tudományelemzési Sorozata 7., 1993)
EUGENE GARFIELD: Refereeing and Peer Review. Part 1. Opinion and Conjecture on the Effectiveness of Refereeing
10 GARFIELD: REFEREEING AND PEER REVIEW, PART 1 from unrecognized or little-known institutions are less likely to be accepted for publication than occasionally comparable contributions by scholars of great repute. Some cases of questionable referee ethics have been documented. Perhaps the most publicized example, according to a 1984 article by free-lance medical writer Barbara Fox in Medical Communications, the journal of the American Medical Writers Association, 3 8 was one reported on by former Science staff writer William J. Broad. 3 9 It involved a paper submitted by Helena WachslichtRodbard, NIH, Bethesda, Maryland, to NEJM. The paper was assigned to two referees, one of whom recommended acceptance, while the other —Vijay Soman of Yale University, who had similar research in progress —recommended rejection. Arnold Relman, editor, NEJM, informed WachslichtRodbard that her paper had "engendered considerable differences of opinion among our referees" 3 9 and told her the manuscript was unacceptable unless revised. But the matter was far from over. Soman had photocopied WachslichtRodbard's study and, without informing his coauthor, Philip Felig, vice chairman of the Department of Medicine at Yale, of what he had done, sent their article incorporating the plagiarized data to the American Journal of Medicine, of which Felig was an associate editor. By coincidence, the journal sent the article out for review to Wachslicht-Rodbard's superior, who showed it to her. It contained more than a dozen passages, verbatim, from her own manuscript; she wrote to Relman accusing Felig and Soman of plagiarism and conflict of interest in the refereeing of her paper. Relman agreed that it had been highly improper for Soman to agree to even read the paper, which was later published in the NEJM under Wachslicht-Rodbard's name. 4 0 The abuse of anonymity is a longstanding matter of concern. In an article appearing in New Scientist, biochemist Robert Jones, Royal College of Surgeons, London, asserted that "the act of submission of a paper can place the author at the mercy of the malignant jealousy of an anonymous rival." 4 1 The belief seems to be that, from behind the walls of their fortress of anonymity, referees are free to hurl at authors volleys of invective that cannot be effectively countered. "Anonymity tends to bring out the worst in people," according to Heinz Fraenkel-Conrat, Department of Molecular Biology and Virus Laboratory, University of California, Berkeley, in a letter to the editors of Nature A 2 "I was recently asked to review, and advocated rejection of, a paper for a virological journal on the basis of factual comments which I would have been quite willing to sign. The editor sent me, out of courtesy, copies of his rejection letter together with the other referee's sarcastic poison-pen comments, also rejecting the paper. There was no justification for one civilised person insulting another in such a manner.... That outburst was solely the joy of releasing adrenalin with anonymous impunity." 4 2 While FraenkelConrat's analysis may be correct in this situation, there is little evidence, other than anecdotal, that this is a widespread phenomenon. But it suggests fertile ground for study: do ad hominem comments —those leveled at authors, as distinct from strong opinions about the authors' text —occur more frequently in signed or in unsigned reviews? In a "Guest Comment" published in Physics Today, F. Curtis Michel, professor of space physics and astronomy, Rice University, Houston, calls for referees to back up their comments. "Accountability is now all directed back at the author," he writes. 4 3 "If there is any dispute, it is entirely the authors' fault because they have 'failed to convince their peers.' Here, the word 'peer' has a
