- “This reads like a mystery novel, or a poker tourney, with so much dodging and hedging. Call a spade a spade, and get on with it.”
- “Hopefully they will send it somewhere else so I don't have to review it a 4th time!!”
- “This is one of the worst paper I never reviewed!”
- “I even got to the point where I began to question my own judgment - can it really be that bad?”
- “Sorry for delay - I'll spare you all the usually lame excuses for why I'm so lame; lameness just has a way of creeping up on me this time of year….”
Beyond reviewer comments, one person declined to accept to review a manuscript. His reason for declining to review was quite simple: "Even the title is terminally boring."
There is a message for authors in his comment, or so it would seem.
"The mistake, of course, is to have thought that peer review was any more than a crude means of discovering the acceptability — not the validity — of a new finding. Editors and scientists alike insist on the pivotal importance of peer review. We portray peer review to the public as a quasi-sacred process that helps to make science our most objective truth teller. But we know that the system of peer review is biased, unjust, unaccountable, incomplete, easily fixed, often insulting, usually ignorant, occasionally foolish, and frequently wrong."
ReplyDeleteRichard Horton- Editor of “the Lancet”