PROMPT: Describe the process of peer review to someone who does not frequently read scientific articles. In your response, consider the pros and cons of peer review and how that might impact the credibility of the results that come from that scientific article.
The author of the work analyzes the data, forms an opinion, and once a paper is formed, the author then proceeds to get the paper published in a scholarly journal (in most cases). Before the author’s work can be properly published, the paper must be reviewed by a group of experts in the same field as the author. The experts in the same field are needed in case any of the data is insufficient, the writing isn’t appropriate for the audience, or the paper just is not done well enough to be published. The main idea regarding peer review is that it either challenges or validates the author’s work. This is important because scholarly journals are where most researchers get their references, ideas, etc. A peer review decides whether an author’s work should be published in a scholarly journal or not. The pros of a peer review are that an author’s work will be published if it should be. A con of this process is that the peer review panel is anonymous but the author isn’t. This poses an issue regarding bias in some cases. If the author is known for something controversial, it may leave a sour taste in the mouths of the panel, and not be considered a credible reference for research.
