Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
paper. Reviewers, moreover, are human beings subject to the same frailties that all people are. In
some cases, they may be predisposed to assess unfavorably work that challenges their findings and
theories, or assess favorably those papers that support them. The process of peer review is fallible,
but nonetheless it is the best quality control mechanism we have in science. And it is scientific
skepticism in action.
A paper may be in review and revision for a year or more before it appears in a scientific
journal. And one might have to wait yet another year for any single authoritative (that is, peer
reviewed) challenge of that paper to work its way through the process. The seeming disconnect
between the slow pace of scientific discourse and the immediacy of nearly all other media in this new
information age is striking. In these times of Twitter, blogging, and the twenty-four-hour news cycle,
the old-fashioned, rather formal ways of science may seem archaic, if not outright prehistoric. Why
can't we speed up the scientific process so that it meets our thirst for ready information and
immediate response?
The process of publishing scientific work actually is more streamlined in some respects these
days. Where once an author had to mail to the journal a cumbersome parcel containing a stack of
duplicate hard copies of a manuscript, a paper can now be submitted online through a Web interface.
And thanks to e-mail, no longer does an editor have to wait months to line up appropriate reviewers,
get the paper off to them, and wait for return surface mail.
But this hasn't led to a dramatic decrease in the time from submission to publication during the
Internet age. While the technology has changed, basic human nature has not—that's part of the answer
at least. Modern scientists are no less susceptible to procrastination than scientists of yore, and they
are every bit as busy. Furthermore, scientific work is no easier to evaluate today than it was in the
past. A complicated theoretical derivation or sophisticated data analysis takes as long to review and
assess today as it may have years ago. In short, scientific findings must still be vetted in the
traditional manner: careful, deliberate review by other scientists with training and credentials that
qualify them to evaluate the work. Scientific exchanges, critiques, and their replies must similarly
work their way through that same process. Therein lies a conundrum.
Skepticism Meets the Internet Age
While publication of formal (peer reviewed) criticism of a peer reviewed scientific article may have
to wait a year or more from the day the original article was published, a blog post expressing a
critical opinion about the paper could appear on the Internet by nightfall of publication day and more
soon thereafter. Now that opinions about science have become just another way to wage politics and
scientists have become subject to the sorts of attacks once reserved for the political sphere, there are
some lessons to be learned from politics. Chief among them is that a lie that is repeated often enough
without refutation becomes perceived by many to be true.
When it comes to reporting findings in climate science and other fields of policy-relevant
science, untruths and innuendo are readily propagated by a network of amateur pseudo-skeptics,
specialty PR firms, and members of the corporate media who share their ideological views. Woe to
the scientist who is slow to respond when subjected to such an attack, naively content to let the peer
review process sort out the matter. By the time any formal response to potentially specious criticisms
might be published, the damage to the credibility of the scientist, to the science, and even to society at
