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The Failure of Peer Review

By David A. Martindale and Jonathan Gould
January 30, 2008

In this article on peer review, we hope to create for the reader a healthy skepticism about the process, and shed light on assumptions that we believe are often made by colleagues, attorneys and judges about the academic rigor and scientific integrity of the endeavor. We begin with a fundamental truth that may appear to many readers to have been borrowed from the collected quotes of Yogi Berra: The quality of peer review is inextricably tied to the quality of the peers conducting the review.

Who Is a Peer?

In 1986, in Batson v. Kentucky, 476 U.S. 79, the United States Supreme Court weighed in on the meaning of 'peer' as used in the jury selection process. In doing so, the Court drew upon a decision handed down in 1879. In Strauder v. West Virginia, 100 U.S. 303 (1879), the Court defined peers as 'equals of the person whose rights [the jury] is selected or summoned to determine; that is, [a jury] of his neighbors, fellows, associates, persons having the same legal status in society as that which he holds' (at 308).

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