Creationist frauds tell their dupes that the scientific process of peer review, is a device to ensure conformity to scientific dogma and to prevent unorthodox (i.e., creationist) opinions from being published in respected journals.
This helps maintain the delusion that there is real scientific support for creationism and that many more scientists are really creationists than is apparent from the scientific literature.
It also plays to conspiracism, which is a normal component of creationism, caused by the same childish teleological thinking defect in an adult, by helping to maintain the delusion that scientists and publishers of scientific journals, periodicals and books, and their staff, are all part of a gigantic international Satanic conspiracy to turn people away from God and destroy people's trust in the church and the Bible.
The truth is that peer review is simply a device to ensure the research was conducted with sufficient rigor and proper controls, that the authors have provided the required standard of evidence to support their claims and that their conclusions are indeed supported by the evidence. It also helps insure against plagiarism since the expert reviewers will very likely be aware of the work of others in their field of expertise.
Here, for example is the peer-review process as outlined in a blog by the International Journal of Innovative Research and Development (IJIRD):
The peer review process is a crucial component of academic and scientific publishing. It involves the evaluation of research papers, articles, or manuscripts by experts in the same field as the author (peers) to ensure the quality, validity, and originality of the work before it is published. If anyone wants to get published in a distinguished international journal, they need to know the process thoroughly. Here are ten points to explain the peer review process:The peer review process helps maintain the quality and credibility of research work and prevents the dissemination of inaccurate or flawed research, and fosters scientific progress through constructive feedback and collaboration among researchers.
- Submission: The author submits their research paper or manuscript to a reputable academic journal or conference. The submission typically includes the manuscript, references, figures, and other supplementary material.
- Editor Assessment: The journal’s editor or conference organisers review the submission to ensure it meets the basic criteria for submission, such as adherence to the journal’s scope and guidelines.
- Reviewer Selection: The editor selects independent and qualified reviewers with expertise in the subject area of the submitted work. Reviewers are often researchers or scholars who have published in the same field.
- Review Process: Reviewers critically evaluate the submission for accuracy, originality, methodology, relevance, and overall quality. They assess the strengths and weaknesses of the work.
- Blind Peer Review: In many cases, the peer review process is “double-blind,” meaning that both the reviewers and the authors are anonymous to each other. This helps ensure unbiased evaluations.
- Reviewer Reports: After reviewing the manuscript, reviewers provide detailed feedback, comments, and recommendations to the editor. They may suggest revisions, point out errors, or request additional information.
- Decision Making: Based on the reviewer reports, the editor makes an informed decision on whether to accept the manuscript for publication, request revisions, or reject it. The decision is communicated to the author.
- Revisions: If revisions are requested, the author makes the necessary changes to address the reviewers’ comments and concerns. The revised version is then resubmitted for further evaluation.
- Final Acceptance: Once the manuscript meets the journal’s standards and satisfies the reviewers and editor, it is accepted for publication.
- Publication: The accepted manuscript undergoes final editing and formatting before being published in the academic journal or presented at the conference. The peer-reviewed status indicates that the work has been rigorously evaluated by experts in the field.
Peer review is also explained in a 2014 article by Andre Spicer, Professor of Organisational Behaviour, Cass Business School, City, University of London and Thomas Roulet, Novak Druce Research Fellow, University of Oxford, from The Conversation on the same subject.
Their article is reprinted here under a Creative Commons licence, reformatted for stylistic consistency:
Explainer:
what is peer review?
what is peer review?
What exactly is peer review?
Andre Spicer, City, University of London and Thomas Roulet, University of Oxford
We’ve all heard the phrase “peer review” as giving credence to research and scholarly papers, but what does it actually mean? How does it work?
Peer review is one of the gold standards of science. It’s a process where scientists (“peers”) evaluate the quality of other scientists’ work. By doing this, they aim to ensure the work is rigorous, coherent, uses past research and adds to what we already knew.
Most scientific journals, conferences and grant applications have some sort of peer review system. In most cases it is “double blind” peer review. This means evaluators do not know the author(s), and the author(s) do not know the identity of the evaluators. The intention behind this system is to ensure evaluation is not biased.
The more prestigious the journal, conference, or grant, the more demanding will be the review process, and the more likely the rejection. This prestige is why these papers tend to be more read and more cited.
The process in details
The peer review process for journals involves at least three stages.
- The desk evaluation stage
When a paper is submitted to a journal, it receives an initial evaluation by the chief editor, or an associate editor with relevant expertise.
At this stage, either can “desk reject” the paper: that is, reject the paper without sending it to blind referees. Generally, papers are desk rejected if the paper doesn’t fit the scope of the journal or there is a fundamental flaw which makes it unfit for publication.
In this case, the rejecting editors might write a letter summarising his or her concerns. Some journals, such as the British Medical Journal, desk reject up to two-thirds or more of the papers. - The blind review
If the editorial team judges there are no fundamental flaws, they send it for review to blind referees. The number of reviewers depends on the field: in finance there might be only one reviewer, while journals in other fields of social sciences might ask up to four reviewers. Those reviewers are selected by the editor on the basis of their expert knowledge and their absence of a link with the authors.
Reviewers will decide whether to reject the paper, to accept it as it is (which rarely happens) or to ask for the paper to be revised. This means the author needs to change the paper in line with the reviewers’ concerns.
Usually the reviews deal with the validity and rigour of the empirical method, and the importance and originality of the findings (what is called the “contribution” to the existing literature). The editor collects those comments, weights them, takes a decision, and writes a letter summarising the reviewers’ and his or her own concerns.
It can therefore happen that despite hostility on the part of the reviewers, the editor could offer the paper a subsequent round of revision. In the best journals in the social sciences, 10% to 20% of the papers are offered a “revise-and-resubmit” after the first round. - The revisions – if you are lucky enough
If the paper has not been rejected after this first round of review, it is sent back to the author(s) for a revision. The process is repeated as many times as necessary for the editor to reach a consensus point on whether to accept or reject the paper. In some cases this can last for several years.
Ultimately, less than 10% of the submitted papers are accepted in the best journals in the social sciences. The renowned journal Nature publishes around 7% of the submitted papers.
The peer review process is seen as the gold standard in science because it ensures the rigour, novelty, and consistency of academic outputs. Typically, through rounds of review, flawed ideas are eliminated and good ideas are strengthened and improved. Peer reviewing also ensures that science is relatively independent.
Because scientific ideas are judged by other scientists, the crucial yardstick is scientific standards. If other people from outside of the field were involved in judging ideas, other criteria such as political or economic gain might be used to select ideas. Peer reviewing is also seen as a crucial way of removing personalities and bias from the process of judging knowledge.
Despite the undoubted strengths, the peer review process as we know it has been criticised. It involves a number of social interactions that might create biases – for example, authors might be identified by reviewers if they are in the same field, and desk rejections are not blind.
It might also favour incremental (adding to past research) rather than innovative (new) research. Finally, reviewers are human after all and can make mistakes, misunderstand elements, or miss errors.
Are there any alternatives?
Defenders of the peer review system say although there are flaws, we’re yet to find a better system to evaluate research. However, a number of innovations have been introduced in the academic review system to improve its objectivity and efficiency.
Some new open-access journals (such as PLOS ONE) publish papers with very little evaluation (they check the work is not deeply flawed methodologically). The focus there is on the post-publication peer review system: all readers can comment and criticise the paper.
Some journals such as Nature, have made part of the review process public (“open” review), offering a hybrid system in which peer review plays a role of primary gate keepers, but the public community of scholars judge in parallel (or afterwards in some other journals) the value of the research.
Another idea is to have a set of reviewers rating the paper each time it is revised. In this case, authors will be able to choose whether they want to invest more time in a revision to obtain a better rating, and get their work publicly recognised.
Andre Spicer, Professor of Organisational Behaviour, Cass Business School, City, University of London and Thomas Roulet, Novak Druce Research Fellow, University of Oxford
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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