Scientific Peer Review Is Broken – Fighting to Fix It with Anonymity

Anonymity can&#x27;t fix scientific peer review, it can only replace type I errors with type II errors. Instead of suppressing criticism that ought not to be suppressed, anonymity can (and often does) fail to suppress criticism that really ought to be suppressed because it is in fact false and defamatory. And indeed, what this article is really about is a lawsuit that alleges that this kind of error has in fact taken place.<p>Ironically, the very title of this article is a model of non-scientific thinking that ought to be subject to criticism, but attempts to inoculate itself against criticism by asserting that the subjects of the piece are protagonists &quot;fighting to fix&quot; a broken system. They&#x27;re not. They&#x27;re fighting to replace one broken system with a different broken system.<p>There is no question that scientific peer review is broken and needs to be fixed. But anonymity is not the answer. And holding anonymity up as something that should itself be beyond criticism is <i>certainly</i> not the answer.

The actual complaint filed shows pretty nasty behavior. Here&#x27;s the full complaint: <a href="https://retractionwatch.files.wordpress.com/2014/10/filed-complaint.pdf" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;retractionwatch.files.wordpress.com&#x2F;2014&#x2F;10&#x2F;filed-co...</a><p>Someone very clearly was trying to get Dr. Sarkar fired. The PubPeer comments are only one small aspect. But the person then also (I assume anonymously) emailed his new employer to allege fraud, and then went so far as to print out these allegations and stamped them with official looking nonsense about being from the an NIH investigation (which didn&#x27;t exist), and distributed them throughout Sarkar&#x27;s department mail boxes.<p>The complaint makes a decent case for why they think pretty much all the negativity directed at this researcher is likely from one angry person. They obviously can&#x27;t prove that multiple anonymous comments are from the same person, but reading the content it certainly seems likely. What is assumed to be the same person then took things way past the line of what most of us would consider ethical.<p>There may very well be a place for anonymous calling out of potential research misconduct. But making fraud allegations anonymously online, then printing out those comments, trying to fake them to look like an official government inquiry, and physically delivering them to the researcher&#x27;s boss at his place of work isn&#x27;t the way to do that. This case <i>might</i> be one of those cases where the anonymity should be protected at all costs out of principle, but it&#x27;s a really shitty case to wave your &quot;we&#x27;re the good guys&quot; flag for.

I think the increase in fraudulent papers getting published is a symptom, not the disease. The disease is that there are too many scientists doing research for a given research budget.<p>Due to the ferocious competition for grant money, people are either sloppy and cut corners, or do whatever they need to do and outright cheat to publish in top tier journals.<p>As a society, we need to make a decision about how much we want to fund scientific research - then, once we&#x27;ve made that decision, insure that we put in place a sustainable system in place - we cannot put in a put of money to finance 100 grants, but then build a pipeline that funnels an ever increasing amount of people into a pool that remains constant.

I take the opposite approach: I sign my reviews and have ever since I was a grad student. It compels me to do a better job reviewing and often leads to further discussion and sometimes collaboration with the authors. Some people don&#x27;t like what I have to say, but by and large, they respect it. For many topics that I review for, the authors will have a pretty good idea that I wrote the review unless I am intentionally vague. I would rather write clearly and directly and stand behind it. It is a professional risk that I don&#x27;t think anyone should be compelled to take, but I think signing reviews is generally good for science.

It seems plausible to imagine a system where PeerPub could retain their &quot;published author to register<p>This model relies on t a blind cryptographic signature.(<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blind_signature" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Blind_signature</a>)<p>PeerPub generates a public&#x2F;private key pair.<p>1. Alice wishes to register on PeerPub. She generates a Nonce N.<p>2. She blinds the nonce with a factor B.<p>3. She submits the blinded nonce and her identity to PeerPub. PeerPub checks her credentials and executes a blind signature of the number and returns it to Alice.<p>4.Alice now separately registers an account perhaps using a privacy protecting system like Tor. She uses the original N and the unblinded Signature.<p>5. PeerPub verifies N + signature and registers the account. PeerPub will have no way of linking N to the original credentials. PeerPub can record N and make sure it can only be used once to register an account.

Peer review might be broken, but it&#x27;s not anonymity that will fix it. For the simple reason that we already have double-blind reviews in many fields and the peer reviewing process is not any less broken there.<p>There are people who are thinking of multiple solutions, one that I think is interesting is the proposition of Open Scholar, dubbed &quot;Independant Peer-Review&quot;. I submitted it to HN so we can discuss it without flooding this thread, if it interests HNers: <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8734271" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=8734271</a>.<p>In there scheme, the papers are open access from the beginning, the peer reviewing process is open, and reviews are citable. I believe it would encourage better and deeper reviews.<p>It would also be very nice for young scientists or students who want to apply for a PhD grant to be able to show that they are able to write a comprehensive review of a paper in their field, and that their review was good enough to significantly improve the paper or to be selected by the authors and&#x2F;or publishers to be released alongside the paper, for instance.

As a person who did research until a few years ago, I must say that the problem is the exact opposite. When you send an article to a journal, the paper gets reviewed by a number of peers, which send their comments back to the Editor on the appropriateness of the claimed work.<p>The problem with this mechanism is that reviewers have no liability, because their comment is anonymous to the author and won&#x27;t be available to the readers, as it won&#x27;t be published as part of the article. The result is that reviewers are not made accountable now or in the future for inaccuracies in their review, blatant attacks, or tactical requests for additional irrelevant investigation just out of spite or to stall you so that they can scoop your paper.<p>Occasionally, the Editor can step in and disregard a particularly obnoxious reviewer, but it depends on the editor, the journal, and the political&#x2F;scientific strength of the reviewer.

&gt; A prominent cancer scientist, unhappy with the attention his research papers have received on PubPeer, is suing some of our anonymous commenters for defamation<p>On the other hand, should anonymous commenters have the balance of power: in other words, say whatever they want with impunity, even if it actually is defamatory?<p>(Not saying that is the case in this situation, but in general).<p>The problem is that defamation is a legal concept, which can only be tried legally. So for instance, whereas a site can rigorously enforce rules which say that all comments are directed at the research material, and not at persons, and have a factual basis in that material, those measures cannot take away the right of someone, who feels they have been defamed, to take the matter to court (where they will almost certainly lose, which is neither here nor there).<p>You can&#x27;t just create a site and declare it above the law, so to speak.<p>The only way to protect the identities of the anonymous is for the site to take responsibility for the statements it publishes: to assert that the anonymous statements are subject to rigorous standards of review, and when published, they in fact reflect the views of PubPeer, and PubPeer alone, and not of any anonymous persons (who do not publish any statements, but act only as sources of information).<p>Then if someone feels they have been the target of defamation, the defendant shall be PubPeer.

What we need here is a more nuanced approach. Anonymity can solve some problems in research, but it will make other worse.<p>When people are anonymous, they ARE more likely to be truthful in their criticism. They have less incentive to hold back, and it&#x27;s just human nature to tone down critical feedback when you&#x27;re critiquing the work of someone with is either influential or an acquaintance. No one likes to make enemies.<p>On the other hand, anonymity can pretty clearly bring out some of the worst in us. Some people feel little obligation to be fair or honest when their reputation isn&#x27;t on the line, and so you see people trying to knock down rivals, people they don&#x27;t like, or random strangers just for the &quot;thrill of the troll.&quot;<p>Imagine if every time you applied for a job your potential employer had access to anonymous feedback on your past work. Some of it might be fair and honest (whether positive or negative), but some of it might be lies from an anonymous coworker with a grudge. Maybe someone is trying to take you down a rung because you got the promotion over them. You could be penalized for any petty reason, and it would stick with you.<p>Anonymous feedback communicated publicly is much the same. It holds the reviewer and the object of review on unequal footing. Anonymous feedback would be great for an author or even an editor, but it&#x27;s just not fair to allow the pettiest of people to attack the works of others while wearing a mask. I&#x27;d like a system that helps researchers and others invested in the work to solicit anonymous feedback to make the work better. Public-facing commentary, on the other hand, should be tied to an identity.

One of the main issues is that this is just a really tedious process. No one wants to go through algebra; that&#x27;s why it&#x27;s siphoned off to grad students. Do you really think a tenured professor is going to spend time checking the grunt work on &#x2F;someone else&#x27;s&#x2F; paper when they won&#x27;t do it for their own? I&#x27;m intrigued by the possibility of using natural language processing and logical system tools like Wolfram Alpha. Wolfram recently posted on his blog about building machines that could store data about complex mathematical objects, and already you can build machines that confirm first order logical statements.<p>Farming out low-level tasks to automated systems would be interesting. Imagine if the format of papers changed entirely, ie, you had to submit your proofs in certain formats, or at least certain parts in specific ways. I&#x27;m sure that many professors would be elated to see the number of papers they have to review go down drastically; although, I&#x27;m sure many will be disappointed to get a return letter that says, &quot;I&#x27;m sorry, but the low level flaws were so serious that they were automatically rejected and are not fit for review.&quot;

Let&#x27;s be sure to point out some terrible journalism, reading the following makes me completely disinterested in finishing the article and have considerably less respect for Wired.<p>&gt; Have you ever questioned the claims that scientists make? For example, last year’s discovery of the so-called “God particle,”<p>Using the nickname for the Higgs in the context of questioning science claim is nothing but bait for the foolish and misinformed, and in this way anyone scientifically literate should seriously question any claims or opinions in this publication.

This is an interesting problem. On the one hand, there are merits to a referee being anonymous to the submitter. Part of this may be to avoid reprisal for younger referees, but even for more established referees, you may be freer to comment if you are anonymous to the author. BUT, you are not completely anonymous. Hopefully (though there have been some recent scandals related to this) an editor of the journal knows your work and has chosen to use you as a referee based on that. This can help to keep down some of the noise that another poster (lisper) mentioned. Also, the fact that the editor knows who you are may provide some constraint on how you may phrase a review as compared to if you were completely anonymous.<p>I don&#x27;t think this is something one should issue a lawsuit over--but I also don&#x27;t think that their proposal of completely anonymous review is at all useful.

My understanding is that most peer review systems in place at various journals and funding agencies today are already anonymous (except for when people are identified by their well known viewpoints.) If you ask me, the real problem can&#x27;t be solved with communications technology, the real problem must be solved at the source: The funding agencies need to take the importance of reproduction of results seriously and require their grantees to do a certain amount of rote reproduction work in order to qualify for grants for novel research. Will it slow the pace of things down? Certainly. Will it increase the quality of the science? Certainly.

Much of the discussion here seems to have become &quot;anonymity vs. non-anonymity&quot; --- i.e. either anonymity is good for research or it&#x27;s bad for research. Why not just accept that in some venues there will be anonymity, and in some not, and let them each develop according to the merits of the respective approaches? No need to have all research anonymous or all research clearly attributed to a public identity.

I usually think that peer review is broken, but that is because we almost always miss the point of what the actual purpose of peer review is for. Peer review is NOT for laymen. A scientific paper is part of a much longer process of discovery which includes massive amounts of debate and argument. Papers always reflect they very edge of a field where literally the only people who can judge whether the results are plausible are peers because they are the ones who are also trying to make sense of the same phenomenon. Over time some primary research papers are singled out because they really are excellent explanations of a phenomenon most of the time however you have to go look at a review paper. Furthermore peer review is absolutely NOT about reproducibility, it is a prerequisite that says that it MIGHT be worth trying to reproduce this work or work contingent on these results being valid. There are so many reasons why a result might be wrong that it often takes fields years to figure it out and the published literature is a record of that.

With Publons.com (<a href="https://publons.com" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;publons.com</a>) we have different philosophy: the more transparency we can bring to the review process, the better. At the same time we recognise that both blind and double-blind peer review play an important role in generating quality research.<p>Our approach is to focus on turning review of all kinds (including both pre- and post-publication) into a measurable research output -- something you can add to your resume. We support both anonymous and signed review with the idea that it will lead to greater transparency in the long run and also motivate reviewers to contribute more.<p>We have a significant number of both types of review now and are starting to look ways to measure if there are significant differences between blind and open review.

Something I&#x27;ve noticed is that most online articles about scientific misconduct and invalid results revolve around the medical sciences. Granted, medicine is probably the biggest piece of the scientific pie right now, and other branches of science may have their own problems, but I think it misleads the public to have a title like &quot;scientific peer review is broken,&quot; for an article that focuses exclusively on one branch of science.<p>Disclaimer: I&#x27;m a physicist. I&#x27;m sure that physics is not beyond critique, but unless somebody is willing to take enough of an interest in the inner workings of physics research to say something specific about it or credibly include it in a generalization, I&#x27;d rather say something like &quot;medical peer review is broken.&quot;

<i>Fortunately, the First Amendment is on our side. It protects the right to anonymous speech.</i><p>I don&#x27;t understand how &quot;The government cannot outlaw your speech&quot; means &quot;Your anonymity is protected by law from private parties&quot;. How does that interpretation come about?

Not as deep an article as I&#x27;d hoped, but it points to a difficult question. As reviewers of scientific papers have unprecedented power over what research gets published, <i>who reviews the reviewers</i>?<p>(A personal example - I have just spent a week constructing a counterargument to a reviewer who didn&#x27;t read my paper properly. Imagine having an online discussion where your career success hangs on the response of an anonymous, disengaged flamer to a single post of yours: can you imagine how much effort you put into that post? Sadly this particular argument is pointless and serves nobody; it would be better use of my time to get on with actual research, but that&#x27;s not how the system works).

I don&#x27;t get their stance ... peer-review is already &quot;anonymous&quot;. There are also a lot of issues with truly anonymous user forums (see 2chan and 4chan). For me it always seems as if the social aspects of communication disappear when one is truly anonymous, e.g. hate speech. The problem is not lack of anonymity but lack of incentives for reviews (I don&#x27;t get anything from doing a thorough review of a paper and often it&#x27;s hard to impossible to judge the contribution without dataset and code). It seems peerpub and similar systems will attract people who have the incentive to attack specific authors (as it happened in this case).

The obvious problem here is with fields that are small and highly specialized, such that anyone knowledgeable enough to comment on a topic are known to be from a small circle of scientists.

Thank you for helping to promote reproducibility of published results by supporting anonymous peer review! Science Exchange (YC S11) is also making great progress in the facilitation of scientific reproducibility. We just completed independently validating select results from 50 cancer biology papers. <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8731274" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=8731274</a>

Pubpeer is not a peer review site, it&#x27;s site with comments. I think they are doing it wrong by promoting it as &quot;anonymous peer review&quot;, because by definition if its anonymous it can&#x27;t be &quot;peers&quot;. It should (continue to) be a companion to published papers that every once in a while does the service of spotting an error.

Another anonymous review system. What could possibly go wrong?<p>If there&#x27;s anything we&#x27;ve learned by now about &quot;crowdsourced&quot; review systems, it&#x27;s that, without an elaborate way to evaluate reviewers, they fail. Badly. Facebook &quot;likes&quot;, Google &quot;+1&quot;, and Yelp reviews are heavily spammed. This just does not work.

Anonymity is hard in practice when so much of science consist of small niche fields where it can be pretty obvious who the author of a paper is by just reading the content.<p>A better solution might be to enforce non-anonymous peer-reviews that can be read by the public after the paper has been published.

I don&#x27;t think push some form of crowd intelligence would change much. I guess the best thing we could do is to create some conditions to let new nodes emerge and complete. I also believe better funding distribution mechanism&#x2F;system will help a lot.

Dr. Mark Burgess just blogged &quot;Why I stopped caring about peer review, and learned to love the work&quot;. <a href="http://markburgess.org/blog_peer.html" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;markburgess.org&#x2F;blog_peer.html</a>

The submission here is an interesting article by the founders of PubPeer, which has already been in the news quite a bit for finding examples of shoddy science papers that have had to be withdrawn by journal editors. I learned about PubPeer on the group blog Retraction Watch (RT), and I just bopped over to Retraction Watch after reading the article kindly submitted here. RT reports in detail on the defamation suit against PubPeer that is mentioned in the parent article of this thread.[1] I hope the PubPeer experiment can continue and thrive and promote better scientific research practices.<p>Some of the other comments here suggest that anonymity of reviewers is dangerous in itself. That&#x27;s why some researchers promote an open review process. Jelte Wicherts and his co-authors put a set of general suggestions for more open data in science research in an article in Frontiers of Computational Neuroscience (an open-access journal).[2]<p>&quot;With the emergence of online publishing, opportunities to maximize transparency of scientific research have grown considerably. However, these possibilities are still only marginally used. We argue for the implementation of (1) peer-reviewed peer review, (2) transparent editorial hierarchies, and (3) online data publication. First, peer-reviewed peer review entails a community-wide review system in which reviews are published online and rated by peers. This ensures accountability of reviewers, thereby increasing academic quality of reviews. Second, reviewers who write many highly regarded reviews may move to higher editorial positions. Third, online publication of data ensures the possibility of independent verification of inferential claims in published papers. This counters statistical errors and overly positive reporting of statistical results. We illustrate the benefits of these strategies by discussing an example in which the classical publication system has gone awry, namely controversial IQ research. We argue that this case would have likely been avoided using more transparent publication practices. We argue that the proposed system leads to better reviews, meritocratic editorial hierarchies, and a higher degree of replicability of statistical analyses.&quot;<p>Wicherts has published another article, &quot;Publish (Your Data) or (Let the Data) Perish! Why Not Publish Your Data Too?&quot;[3] on how important it is to make data available to other researchers. Wicherts does a lot of research on this issue to try to reduce the number of dubious publications in his main discipline, the psychology of human intelligence. When I see a new publication of primary research in that discipline, I don&#x27;t take it seriously at all as a description of the facts of the world until I have read that independent researchers have examined the first author&#x27;s data and found that they check out. Often the data are unavailable, or were misanalyzed in the first place.<p>[1] <a href="http://retractionwatch.com/2014/12/10/pubpeer-files-motion-dismiss-sarkar-defamation-case/" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;retractionwatch.com&#x2F;2014&#x2F;12&#x2F;10&#x2F;pubpeer-files-motion-d...</a><p>[2] Jelte M. Wicherts, Rogier A. Kievit, Marjan Bakker and Denny Borsboom. Letting the daylight in: reviewing the reviewers and other ways to maximize transparency in science. Front. Comput. Neurosci., 03 April 2012 doi: 10.3389&#x2F;fncom.2012.00020<p><a href="http://www.frontiersin.org/Computational_Neuroscience/10.3389/fncom.2012.00020/full" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.frontiersin.org&#x2F;Computational_Neuroscience&#x2F;10.338...</a><p>[3] Wicherts, J.M. &amp; Bakker, M. (2012). Publish (your data) or (let the data) perish! Why not publish your data too? Intelligence,40, 73-76.<p><a href="http://wicherts.socsci.uva.nl/Wichertsbakker2012.pdf" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;wicherts.socsci.uva.nl&#x2F;Wichertsbakker2012.pdf</a>

What the scientific peer review needs is not anonymity, but accountability. Authors put their reputation on the line. Let reviewers put their reputation on the line too. Good reviews and good reviewers need to be appreciated, not anonymized.<p>Let valued scientific reviewers gain reputation in a similar way to how contributors to HN, SE and other sites do.<p>There could even be a viable business model in this. Publishers, be creative!