When peer review seemingly goes down the pub, there's PubPeer!

More than ever before, the term "publish or perish" pervades the corridors of life science institutions everywhere; it's so ingrained into the architecture and infrastructure of science that it's effectively become a subliminal message whispering (howling?!) out of the very walls themselves. And you can be sure that anyone holding a very prominent position in the halls of power in academic life science understands the value of publishing in prominent places. 

That value, of course, ideally translates into cold, hard cash in the form of prestigious research chairs and heavy duty research funds for the laboratory, which ultimately facilitates the creation of a laboratory empire with one big research star at the helm. Competition for research funds in tough economic times means that the stakes are higher, and it can literally be a fight for survival for those further down the ladder. 

The system is feeling the pressure, creaking on it's suspension springs, and the current scenario perhaps unsurprisingly favours the seasoned, established research stars with both the reputation and empire that have thrived and who appear to be most capable of delivering on their promise. The younger scientists still striving to make their first big breakthrough (which means first big paper in a big journal) are feeling the squeeze and feeling left out. 

In terms of the (real) value being created by scientific publication, there is a building argument that scientific publishing is in the midst of a crisis, that the peer review process is itself broken, and that the "value" of publication has been driven down by the fact that a shocking amount of published science appears to be difficult or even impossible to reproduce - this is something that goes totally against one of the supposed benefits of publishing in the first place - i.e. that other scientists can build upon the foundations laid down in the published piece of work. 

It seems that the problems inherent to a "publish or perish" mindset in life science have come home to roost. If publishing is critical to a laboratory's existence and survival then publication must and will happen, more or less at any cost. Ironically, this may have lowered the value created in the process, by forcing individuals to cut corners and maybe lower their scientific standards to get a paper sent out in time for that institutional review or maybe the next big grant application. Further, the battle for precious research funds has become so bloody that I am pretty certain many don't want other scientist competitors trying to reproduce their work, and ensure it isn't possible by omitting small but vital details in their papers. 

Thus, the very mantra of the ivory tower might be the fundamental problem behind its current woes, and recent stories about serious problems in the peer review process only further underline that thinking. The Journal of Irreproducible Results or Retraction Watch can both testify to the prevalence of such problems in the scientific literature. I came across an article recently that discussed the fact that a fake cancer study sent out by a Harvard researcher as a test of the system got accepted in half of the some 300 journals it was sent out to - even though it was quite clearly flawed - now that's scary! Even scarier was the fact that some journals agreed to accept it for a price, which goes completely against the entire process of scientific research.

The system now does have a new watchdog that is gaining traction, if not popularity, in the form of PubPeer, an online platform where scientists can comment on or critique published work anonymously. That anonymity is in line with the peer review process itself, but it is much less popular when it comes to post-publication commentary. Peer review by esteemed colleagues is one thing, but a public forum where anyone can pick apart your work and expose the flaws is quite another. It quite obviously has potential to facilitate scientific harassment (if not outright abuse) via one laboratory repeatedly attacking the work of a top competitor, in order to discredit it. 

One of the other aspects that causes much apprehension is that it even allows insiders in one laboratory to have a go at say, the bosses favourite, and reveal details about Figure 7 that only an insider could know; details which at worst could lead to a paper's retraction. Anyone who has ever been a doctoral student or postdoc has seen that level of jealousy and frustration many times, in more than one lab probably. Now it's one thing if such spying/reporting leads to a bad paper's retraction, but quite clearly it has the power to effectively cause a mutiny in a given laboratory. 

Some believe post-publication review represents the future of the peer review process, and the numbers are beginning to back that up. Since 2012, some 25,000 comments have made it onto PubPeer, in certain cases leading to identification of scientific fraud, and social media has allowed the word to spread very rapidly; in one case expanding a single comment thread on PubPeer into something seen by as many as 250,000 Twitter users. Such post-publication databases do have the potential power to make or break a career, so there is a lot at stake. 

As much as allowing anonymity by unregistered users facilitates open critique of published works, there remains the possibility of abuse, and the fact that a US cancer researcher has sued PubPeer over the treatment of his papers on the site sort of says it all. That researcher has also issued a subpoena to have the names of his detractors exposed, and that might open up a real can of worms if it goes that far. 

That PubPeer is itself anonymous displays the delicacy of this situation and the impact such matters can have on the career of even young scientists, and the founders of PubPeer currently remain anonymous. All three are at the beginning of their careers, and while they have aspirations to open up and make their identity public, well, they are not quite there yet. Whistleblowers are not always beloved, and even if in this case the three founders are merely facilitating the whistleblowing, they are clearly concerned with not blowing themselves into a corner they cannot work themselves out of - unless they can convert PubPeer into their day jobs, at least. 

Only time will tell how all this works out, and whether they will prevail against the suit by a prominent cancer researcher who lost an incredibly lucrative job offer from the University of Mississippi due to PubPeer. Unquestionably, post-publication review has been pretty much restricted to sanctioned put-downs inside private lab meetings, or maybe the occasional heated exchange at international conferences between two big shots, but rarely does science wash its dirty laundry publicly - PubPeer may change of all that. 

Whether it is PubPeer or some enhanced and improved version of it that prevails, exposing the flaws in peer review and spotlighting research misconduct can only lead to an improved scientific process, which will save us all some blood, sweat and tears, as well as time and money, in the long run. As long as the founders focus heavily on preventing abuse, I think PubPeer may have a bright future and could play an important part in forcing researchers to not use the "publish or perish" mantra as an excuse for what is at best misconduct or is at worst  classifiable as scientific fraud.