Peer review is frequently a way of controlling debate

http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php?/site/reviewofbooks_article/4357

Alexander Cockburn


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One way in which critics are silenced is through the accusation that
they are ignoring 'peer-reviewed science'. Yet oftentimes, peer review
is nonsense. As anyone who has ever put his nose inside a university
will know, peer review is usually a mode of excluding the unexpected,
the unpredictable and the unrespectable, and forming a mutually back-
scratching circle. The history of peer review and how it developed is
not a pretty sight. Through the process of peer review, of certain
papers being nodded through by experts and other papers being given a
red cross, the controllers of the major scientific journals can
include what they like and exclude what they don't like. Peer review
is frequently a way of controlling debate, even curtailing it. Many
people who fall back on peer-reviewed science seem afraid to have out
the intellectual argument.

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