Community peer review

A bigger challenge to addressing the failings of peer review comes from perceptions within the broader scientific community. Peer review is widely portrayed as a quasi-sacred process that makes science our most objective truth teller. Any science that rejects peer review endangers their very classification as a science. For example, peer review is a precondition for indexing in biomedical databases such as PubMed. For taxonomy to reject traditional peer review, it will need an exceptionally convincing case that the alternative will substantially improve quaUty and drive-up standards. 

Multiple new series of CCR2 small molecule antagonists have been described in the recent patent and peer-reviewed literature. Importantly, the diversity of structural classes recognized as CCR2 antagonists has increased. These chemical advances should allow the scientific community to test adequately the hypothesis that CCR2 plays a key role in human inflammatory disease. 

This idealized process is often misinterpreted as applying to scientists individually rather than to the scientific enterprise as a whole. Science is a social activity, and one scientist s theory or proposal cannot become accepted unless it has been published, peer reviewed, criticized, and finally accepted by the scientific community. 

Gareth Kilian completed his undergraduate B.Pharm. degree at the University of Port Elizabeth in 1999. In 2002 he completed his M.Sc. degree in medicinal chemistry Cum Laude, also at the University of Port Elizabeth, were his work was directed on the medicinal chemistry of aromatic cyclic dipeptides. He has since worked as a community service pharmacist in 2002 at Butterworth Hospital in the Eastern Cape, after which he was employed as a lecturer in Pharmaceutics at the NMMU, where he currently works. He is a Ph.D. candidate at the NMMU under Professor Pieter Milne, also working on cyclic dipeptides. He has coauthored several peer-reviewed manuscripts in international journals as well as supervising and cosupervising a number of M.Sc. candidates over the past 6 years in the fields of medicinal chemistry and pharmaceutical formulation. 

Branson (1955) was unable to document that Carver ever published in any scientific peer review journal. However, he did point out that there were African American contemparies of Carver who were making significant and documented contributions to science. A few Alrican Americans (e.g. Ernest E. Just and Charles H. Turner) did conduct research at major laboratories, such as the Marine Biological Laboratory (MBL) at Woods Hole, Massachusetts. However, they often were confronted by the prevailing racial attitudes of the time. Specifically, Just and his family were subjected to racist incidents in both the scientific and non-scientific communities (Manning, 1983). 

Nevertheless, these and other data limitations severely restrict our understanding of the experiences of African Americans in the chemistry community. For example, much of the most insightful and interesting data requested from NORC could not be provided or, if provided was of little or no used because of suppressed counts to protect confidentiality. The survey that was provided was for presentations and articles over the past three years. These results show that the median numbers of papers presented by white respondents was two compared to one for black respondents at professional meetings. Each group published a median of one article. An interview questioned the fairness of the so-called peer review journal process. The Cohort 111 interviewee asserts that Science is political. 1 saw a lot of it at.because some of my colleagues were journal editors. 1 saw firsthand why certain articles got published and certain ones didn t. Some got published with scant reviews, while others were scmtinized reviews. ... 

Not surprisingly a discussion of the grants peer review process bring out considerable emotion regardless of the scientific community under study. The... 

The turn of the twentieth century ushered in a period in which a well-educated cohort of African American scientists began conducting research and publishing in peer reviewed journals. Most of the doctoral chemists careers were confined to historically black colleges and universities. However, conditions both in and out of the scientific community were slowly changing. Between World War I and just prior... 

Validation of models is desired but can be difficult to achieve. Models are empirically validated by examining how output data (predictions) compare with observed data (such comparisons, of course, must be conducted on data sets that have not been used to create or specify the model). However, model validations conducted in this manner are difficult given limitations on data sources. As an alternative approach, model credibility can be assessed by a careful examination of the subcomponents of the model and inputs. One should ask the question Does the selection of input variables and the way they are processed make sense Also, confidence in the model may be augmented by peer reviews and the opinion of the scientific community. Common faults and shortcomings are... 

Mike Sailor of the University of California, San Diego, has recently developed an element-specific fluorine detector to be used as a portable nerve gas sensor. What makes his instrument so different is that it has been presented to the scientific community (at an American Chemical Society meeting) before it is put into the hands of soldiers. This gives the opportunity for peer review and for corrections to the technology, if needed, to ensure that the instrument is useful and that money isn t wasted or lives aren t endangered. 

Deichmann W (1972) The debate on DDT. Archives of Toxicology 29(1) 1-27 IPCS (2002) International Chemical Safety Card (ICSC) No. 0084, 0085, and 0086 (the recommendations on these cards also apply to technical xylene) prepared in the context of cooperation between the International Programme on Chemical Safety (IPCS) and the Commission of the European Communities (CEC). Date of peer review August 2002... 

To oversee this surveillance, the European Union has developed a system based on four fundamental cornerstones and controlled by four Community Reference Laboratories (Decision 91/664/EEC) hierarchically linked to a series of 36 authorized National Laboratories (Decision 93/257/EEC). The four cornerstones are a program of reference materials (53), a set of regularly updated mandatory minimum quality criteria for analytical techniques (54-57), a series of Reference Manuals (58, 59), and a continuous series of laboratory workshops plus a future Peer Review Group (60). 

Good science exists in research in academic institutions apart from the soon to be established Environmental Protection Agency s (EPA) Good Laboratory Practice (GLP) guidelines. However, this is not to say that GLP s are not advisable. Good science should be able to stand up to review as having been performed using appropriate and adequate laboratory practices. Scientists have had their work routinely scrutinized by their peers for its quality and will not resent careful analysis by others. For example, only a portion of the work produced by the scientific community is acceptable for publication in its various journals. The rate of acceptance in journals varies but it is apparent that the peer review system attempts to serve as a quality control mechanism in the scientific community. 

It is unfortunate that the proposed regulations are expressed in such a manner as to suggest a lack of confidence in laboratory and field work. Trust and integrity are a major tenet of the academic community. In the vast majority of cases, academics provide solid, scientifically valid information which undergoes and survives peer review in the absence of QAU s and SOP s. 

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