Yudhijit Bhattacharjee, a staff writer at Science magazine, has written an elegant article in the New York Times about the Dutch psychologist Diederik Stapel. The scientific misconduct of Stapel, including fabrication of data for at least 30 publications, outraged the scientific community a couple of years ago. At that time Stapel was the dean of the social and behavioral sciences faculty at the Tilburg university. He returned his [cum laude] Ph.D. title to the University of Amsterdam in November 2011, noting that his “behavior of the past years are inconsistent with the duties associated with the doctorate.”

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Peer review is central to science. But the system is functioning far from perfectly. One issue is that it is difficult to find good reviewers. This was already discussed five years ago on this blog and it was suggested that paying reviewers or making somehow sure that reviewers receive public credit for their efforts might be good ways to alleviate the problem. I agree especially with getting paid, but in my life I’ve only once been offered money to review a research paper. The offer, from a Saudi Arabian journal I had never heard about, surprised me so much that I decided to give it a try. They sent me a terrible paper to review and when I had filed my report, they paid me promptly.

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The scientific community keeps on finding new ways to facilitate to judge scientists. The old-fashioned way of reading her papers, listening to her talks,  interviewing her for more than an hour, reading recommendation letters, and consulting colleagues personally takes way too much time.

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