After all, sharing unexamined assumptions is what makes two scientists 'peers' in the first place

Logically, the only thing worth examining is the unexamined assumptions that we all hold in common

The only real test of a scientific hypothesis is to have it reviewed by non-peers , for they will probably not share the underlying 'unexamined assumptions' that form the outer limits of whatever space a potentially new scientific theory can inhabit in a particular discipline.

By its very definition, peer review always fails, must fail, any truly ground-breaking scientific effort.

Was it me who said Peer Review is too often "Lions reviewed by Donkeys" ?

I guess it was.

I mean that all too often 'cutting edge' research  - paradigm-shifting research - will be rejected by normal science reviewers.

Instead, a scholar's work should be posted online and judged, over time, by a jury of all of their peers the whole world around, not just by six anonymous ( and usually over-worked) colleagues.

If it stands up, then, and only then, should it be considered for formal review by a senior journal in their field....

Journal Atherosclerosis may be more dangerous than atherosclerosis itself - to your science career

STATINs vs EGGs

If you are a friend of the statin industry, enduring a successfully peer-review in Elsevier's journal Atherosclerosis must be like being beaten by marshmallows : the true peer-review, much more savage, only happens when your article emerges in the real world and in blogs.

A Dr David Spence, a friend of the statin industry and a foe of all things egg-like, is certainly finding this out in the most brutal fashion --- as are the PR flacks and flakettes at his and their employer, the University of Western Ontario, once upon a time a well regarded research centre.

Are eggs as (almost as) dangerous as cigarettes as the headlines scream (and as the PR spinners at U of Western Ont more subtly, (nudge, nudge, wink,wink) hinted ?

Most experts who looked at the study don't think so.

And these experts are not all shills for the egg industry, not be a long shot.

The scientific value in (or danger of) eating eggs is a highly contested popular science issue --- as SVE believes all scientific issues to be.

Science statements are not just peer-reviewed by six science reviewers cloaked in secrecy and then accepted by an ever grateful public, as if delivered carved on tablets of stone.

Instead the meaning of all such statements are initially constructed by the originating scientists and their friends (including the rarely-critical science cheerleaders in the science journalism trade).

Then these meanings are critiqued by ordinary members of the non-scientific public in organized groups (perhaps as patients' groups and industry groups) as well as by citizens acting alone based on their individual opinions.

The Dance of the Dialectic , revisited 

A sort of dialectic, back and forth, process follows.

Over time a temporary truce is called and a widely-accepted  meaning of that science statement is declared the temporary winner, but new conflict can and does break out at any time.

Science's uncivil War is, in fact, endless. It runs on far longer than any Cold War Warrior could ever imagine...

(FULL DISCLOSURE : I have high blood pressure, believe in the worth of statins and take them. I love eggs but frequently do not get enough exercise and endure far too much stress. I do not smoke or drink....)

rise of THINK TANKs closely followed rise of rigorous PEER-REVIEW

Junk Science is the Think Tank's raison d'etre

If you got away with JUNK SCIENCE before 1945 - and many academics did because rigorous peer-review before publication was not actually all that common back then - increasingly you couldn't so after 1945.

Second rate and lazy scientists and academics who couldn't cut the mustard, cut classes - bailed out of academic life after they had established a few credentials and swam - like rats - to the rising ships of the anti-peer-review-oriented think tanks.

The post-1945 rise of the think tanks were also industry's and the wealthiest families's response to that fact it was getting harder and harder to find real university professors willing to be their denier-liars  for hire.

The two trends met in the middle : both needed each other.

Think tanks thus do serve an useful role for society after all ; providing the first rate sort of home for the second rate sort of scholar....