Patent Law

The perils of collaborative peer review

By Lawrence B. Ebert, Esq.

Back in 2006, when the eminent US statistician Professor Edward Wegman produced an expert report for the US Congress vindicating Steve McIntyre's demolition of the "hockey stick", he excoriated the way in which this same "tightly knit group" of academics seemed only too keen to collaborate with each other and to "peer review" each other's papers in order to dominate the findings of those IPCC reports on which much of the future of the US and world economy may hang. In light of the latest revelations, it now seems even more evident that these men have been failing to uphold those principles which lie at the heart of genuine scientific enquiry and debate. Already one respected US climate scientist, Dr Eduardo Zorita, has called for Dr Mann and Dr Jones to be barred from any further participation in the IPCC. Even our own George Monbiot, horrified at finding how he has been betrayed by the supposed experts he has been revering and citing for so long, has called for Dr Jones to step down as head of the CRU.

This sort of non-independent review behavior can also infest things like peer-to-patent. It already has dominated recently law review literature in patent reform.

See also

ClimateGate: is a flawed academic consensus really the best?

"Academics who have purposely hidden data have committed scientific fraud"

Full post as published by IPBiz on November 29, 2009 (boomark / email).