Scientific Peer Review Essay

In science explain the necessity for peer-review and why sometimes there is resistance to new scientific theories.
What is scientific peer review?

Scientific peer review is the evaluation of scientific research findings or proposals for competence, significance and originality, by qualified experts who research and submit work for publication in the same field (peers).
Most commonly, peer review is used by the editors of scientific journals, who ask well-qualified experts to provide written opinions about research papers that have been submitted for publication. On completing a project or stage of work, researchers write up their results into a paper presenting their experiments, findings and conclusions, and send the paper to a journal
For some journals the editorial staff is employed by the journal and for others the work is done by professional scientists who act as editors as an additional activity. The selected experts, known as referees (or reviewers) review the paper and judge such things as whether the design and methodology of the research were appropriate, the data are plausible and the paper is written clearly. The referees are asked whether the paper acknowledges prior work, whether it is suitable for the journal’s scientific readership and whether it should be published in its current form or with revisions. Sometimes peer review is used to decide which papers should be delivered at scientific
Publishing requires very specific and substantive feedback about each paper, not just a ‘yes’ or ‘no’ decision. Referees might notice mistakes in calculations, or the absence of sufficient safeguards for checking results, for example, or inappropriate statistical tests. Whether research has been conducted by distinguished scientists in an eminent laboratory or by less established teams, it is subject to this scientific scrutiny. A useful summary of peer review has been provided by a group of social