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Fraud and Peer Review: An Interview with Melinda Baldwin – Scholarly Kitchen (Robert Harington | March 20225)

Posted by Dr Gary Allen in Research Integrity on April 18, 2022
Keywords: Breaches, Good practice, Institutional responsibilities, Journal, Peer review, Research Misconduct, Research results

The Linked Original Item was Posted On March 24, 2022

A graphic about peer review as a component of the scientific process.

In 2018, I talked with Melinda Baldwin (Associate Professor of History at the University of Maryland) about a fascinating article she authored entitled “Scientific Autonomy, Public Accountability, and the Rise of “Peer Review” in the Cold War United States” (Isis, volume 109, number 3, September 2018).

This thought-provoking Scholarly Kitchen piece dips into the controversial question: “Is. it the job of the peer review process to catch research cheats and frauds?”  Really another unpaid role, that remains woefully unrecognised by research institutions, funding bodies and academic publishers.

In talking again with Melinda this month, we initiated a discussion of whether peer review has a role to play in uncovering scientific fraud. Perhaps in the first blush, one may suggest that peer review is entirely appropriate as a fraud detector, but Melinda suggests this is not the role of peer review

I ask Melinda here to take us through her perspective on the role of peer review in context for scientific fraud from her perspective as a historian of science – a perspective that I hope you agree sheds a clear light on the benefits and limitations of peer review in the scientific endeavor.

I’m going to give an annoying non-answer: it depends on who you ask! Journal editors may have different answers from scientists, who have different answers from members of the public interested in scientific findings.

Fraud and Peer Review: An Interview with Melinda Baldwin
Robert Harington and Melinda Baldwin discuss whether peer review has a role to play in uncovering scientific fraud.

Related Reading

Peer review will only improve if journals’ decisions are audited – Times Higher Education (Arfan Ghani | February 2022)

It is time to start paying peer reviewers – Times Higher Education (Adrian Furnham | October 2021)

Let’s Talk About the Volunteers in Scholarly Publishing – Scholarly Kitchen (Haseeb Irfanullah | July 2021)

Why I Won’t Review or Write for Elsevier and Other Commercial Scientific Journals – The Sciences (T.R. Shankar Raman | April 2021)

The $450 question: Should journals pay peer reviewers? – Science (Jeffrey Brainard | March 2021)

The 450 Movement – James Heathers blog (James Heathers | September 2020)

On Clarifying the Goals of a Peer Review Taxonomy – Scholarly Kitchen (Micah Altman & Philip N. Cohenoct | October 2020)

What are innovations in peer review and editorial assessment for? (Papers: Willem Halffman & Serge P.J.M Horbach | May 2020)

Assuring research integrity during a pandemic – BMJopinion (Gowri Gopalakrishna, et al | June 2020)

Why we shouldn’t take peer review as the ‘gold standard’ – The Washington Post (Paul D. Thacker and Jon Tennant | August 2019)

Peer-review experiments tracked in online repository – Nature (Richard Van Noorden | March 2019)

How Do We Move Towards Better Peer Review? – The Wiley Network (Elizabeth Moylan | September 2018)

The Rise of Peer Review: Melinda Baldwin on the History of Refereeing at Scientific Journals and Funding Bodies – Scholarly Kitchen (Robert Harington | September 2018)

Can Peer Review Be Saved? – Chronicle of Higher Education (Paul Basken | March 2018)

Peer Review – Authors and Reviewers – our “North Star” – Scholarly Kitchen (Robert Harington | May 2018)

Peer Review Fails to Prevent Publication of Paper with Unsupported Claims About Peer Review – Scholarly Kitchen (Tim Vines | March 2018)

The pros and cons of publishing peer reviews – Crosstalk (Deborah Sweet | May 2018)

To catch a fraudster: Publisher’s image screening cuts down errata, “repeat offenders” – Retraction Watch ( | November 2017)

Journals Peer Review: Past, Present, Future – Scholarly Kitchen (Alice Meadows | September 2017)

How to be a great reviewer for a research paper – Crosslink (Milka Kostic | August 2017)

Ask The Chefs: Should Peer Review Change? – Scholarly Kitchen (Ann Michael | September 2017)

Recruitment of reviewers is becoming harder at some journals: a test of the influence of reviewer fatigue at six journals in ecology and evolution (Papers: Charles W. Fox, et al | 2017)

Dear Peer Reviewer: Could you also replicate the experiments? Thanks – Retraction Watch (Dalmeet Singh Chawla | January 2017)

Standing up for peer review – CrossTALK (Emilie Marcus: September 2016)

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