Fair warning from an anonymous peer reviewer on one of my recent articles…
“The author is hampered by an inaccurate, naïve, and highly simplistic understanding of the basic principles…which leads him to make ludicrous statements like the following…”
As is well-known, “peer review” is the gold standard of academic achievement. It is assumed that peer review gives rigor and legitimacy to new ideas. This assumption persists even in the context of well-publicized fraud scandals involving high fliers in physics, human cloning, and cancer research which indicate that peer reviewers at journals like Science and Nature can be as sloppy as anyone else.…