Cantekin E I, McGuire T W, Potter R L
University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, Pa.
JAMA. 1990 Mar 9;263(10):1427-30.
The peer review process serves a vital role in the publication of biomedical information. When properly functioning, review should focus exclusively on questions of scientific validity and should avoid becoming enmeshed in questions such as "authorization" and "data ownership." We present a case in which the dissenting views of a coinvestigator were suppressed because the principal investigator and grantee institution informed a medical journal that the coinvestigator was not "authorized" to use the data generated by a publicly funded grant and because the editor of a scholarly journal refused to review the dissenting manuscript and to submit that dissent to external reviewers for peer review. The current peer review system, as shown by this case, is unable to embrace dissent within the peer review process and to use dissent to serve scientific truth and the public interest.
同行评审过程在生物医学信息的发表中起着至关重要的作用。正常运作时，评审应仅专注于科学有效性问题，应避免陷入诸如“授权”和“数据所有权”等问题。我们呈现一个案例，其中一名共同研究者的不同意见被压制，原因是主要研究者和受资助机构告知一家医学期刊该共同研究者“未获授权”使用由公共资助项目产生的数据，且因为一家学术期刊的编辑拒绝审阅该不同意见的稿件并将该不同意见提交给外部评审人员进行同行评审。如该案例所示，当前的同行评审系统无法在同行评审过程中接纳不同意见，也无法利用不同意见服务于科学真理和公众利益。
