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Re: Back to basics – testing your hypothesis.
Posted by:
dcarpenter (IP Logged)
Date: January 11, 2007 11:13AM
A review of technical work product by a another technical person is still a technical review and does not generally meet with the requirments of the well established peer-review process used. Generally speaking, the process requires that nominally three knowledgable reviewers provide comments based on an objective and blind review (sometimes not always possible). Usually an editor is the person who decides who the three reviewers will be. The returned comments are then read by the editor and a decision is made as to if the work will be published (with no revision or minor revision), if the work requires major revision, or is rejected outright. The level of scrutiny of the published work does differ from journal to journal. A ranking process does exist and is broadly based on the percent of rejected (or accepted) papers that where submitted.
I would suggest that when people discuss "the peer-review process" this (as described above) is the process that the supreme court refered to in the Daubert decision. "Peer-review" can be anything you want it to be if you define what the process is. However, most people use this term with many differing definitions that do not meet with what I believe the supreme court was defining the process to be. So call it what you want, but provide your definition of the process.
Douglas J. Carpenter, MScFPE, CFEI, PE, FSFPE
Vice President & Principal Engineer
Combustion Science & Engineering, Inc.
8940 Old Annapolis Road, Suite L
Columbia, MD 21045
(410) 884-3266
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