The Hindu Business Line : Peer review can work if it doesn't simply scratch

PEER review is much in the news. For instance, Uganda plans to implement African Peer Review Mechanism or APRM of the New Partnership for Africa's Development a.k.a. Nepad. The review is aimed at assisting member states "police each other on issues of governance", according to a recent report on http://allafrica.com. There is a carrot behind such self-policing — "donor community, led by the G8, is expected to provide $64b a year through increased investment to Africa."

About a week ago, the Institute of Company Secretaries of India announced it would introduce peer review for practising company secretaries, probably inspired by the Institute of Chartered Accountants of India (ICAI) which has already initiated the process and is hopeful of completing peer review of its 65,000 plus practising CAs within the next three years.

The Guardian alerts that the Arts and Humanities Research Board of the UK "is looking for distinguished researchers to populate its peer review panels". A story on Bloomberg on Japanese economy informs that a peer-review of trade policies once every two years is a membership pre-requisite for all 148 of the WTO's governments. And on www.pcadvisor.co.uk is a caution from a cryptography expert, Phil Zimmermann, that RC4 algorithm used in Microsoft Office's Word and Excel for document encryption is "a proprietary cipher that has not stood up well to peer review."

What is peer review? It is an appraisal by peers, or equals; that is, persons of the same age, status, or ability as another. Peer review is not a new concept. Kamel M. Ajlouni and Usama Al-Khalidi have traced peer review in Arab medicine dating back to the 11th century. "The review of the records by the Chief of Physicians after death occurred represents post-mortem examination of the outcome of therapy by a peer and may be the first documented reference to the practice of peer review," they write. Ten centuries later, we are yet to have in India a systematic autopsy in cases of deaths during or immediately after treatment, leaving kin of the dead wonder if the peers would not want to let down one another, after all.

Peer review a.k.a. `refereeing' (in academics, not soccer) is "a scholarly process," explains Wikipedia. Two main uses of the process are publication of manuscripts, and awarding of research funds. Accordingly, reviewers screen manuscripts submitted, and fund requisitions received. Rationale for peer review is simply that there may be flaws that the author(s) overlooked. "Showing work to others increases the probability that weaknesses will be identified, and with advice and encouragement, fixed," adds http://en.wikipedia.org.

"Peer review of scientific manuscripts dates back to the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society in the 17th century," write Edward J. Hackett and Daryl E. Chubin in a paper titled, "Peer Review for the 21st Century: Applications to Education Research." Publication in peer-reviewed journals adds value to the work. In the field of clinical studies, what passes the peer-review test and goes to print may be the "ultimate basis for most treatment decisions," as Jennifer Washburn notes in her new book "University Inc."

Apart from `grading the grain', as Kees Le Pair had said, peer review does much more, according to Hackett and Chubin. It is "a source of expert advice", as long as there is no hidden agenda in the review exercise. Peer review is "a flywheel that lends stability to research in an area" striking a balance between the new and the old, by testing what is promising "against the cumulative store of shared knowledge and established theory". It is a "communication channel" to circulate what is brewing to others in the discipline so as to help avoid duplication. Lastly, it is "an assertion of professional authority."

However, Wikipedia lists instances when unusual papers got published without peer review. Such as Watson and Crick's 1951 paper on "the structure of DNA" in Nature, and "the 1905 issue of Annalen der Physik, in which Einstein published five extraordinary papers including special relativity and the photoelectric effect." It's a different matter, that in the latter case, the editors of the journal went on to win a Nobel.

Preprints and e-prints are not uncommon; and they circulate well before publication of articles, more to engender discussion. So, there is a view if online forum eliminates the need for journals. "The discussion itself becomes the review," observes Thomas von Foerster in an article titled "The Future (?) of Peer Review." It is, however, necessary that the forum is "sufficiently cohesive."

Open source is an example of peer-oriented software. Again, in computing, ``peer-to-peer'' or P2P, though mired in legal controvery, brings socialism to networks by erasing the notion of clients or servers, and using direct connections between clients or peers. ``Peer pressure'' is what you may face from colleagues, rather than from your boss. `Peerless' sounds like a company name, but is a lonely world with no equals.

In a statement on the subject, the ICAI has defined peer review as "an examination and review of the systems and procedures to determine whether they have been put in place by the practice unit for ensuring the quality of attestation services as envisaged and implied/mandated by the Technical Standards and whether these were effective or not during the period under review."

This came post Enron, imported from the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA), which had peer review for its CPA firms from 1977. In 1987, CPAs participating in a referendum had decided to make peer review compulsory, but results were not to be disclosed.

Last year, AICPA began to debate how transparent peer review can be, when the public was already tired that peer review was degenerating into mutual back scratching, as it was found in the case of the big audit firms that gave one another `all okay' despite black holes.

On ``you scratch my back and I'll scratch yours'', there is an interesting story in Albert Jack's Red Herrings and White Elephants that looks at ``the origins of the phrases we use every day''. The English Navy used to mete out lashing for even minor offences, and such punishments were "usually carried out in full view of the crew, by one of the victim's crewmates," writes Jack. "But it was also likely that the crewmate would himself be a victim of the cat o' nine tails at some stage on a voyage, so would be lenient with his victim by applying only light strokes and merely `scratching' his back."

ZeroBase@TheHindu.co.in

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