Andy Dalby tells a chilling tale in Why I will never trust Science again.
You need to read the full account but as a quick summary, Andy submits a paper to Science that is rejected and within weeks finds that Science accepted another paper, a deeply flawed one, reaching the same conclusion and when he notified Science, it was suggested he post an online comment. Andy’s account has quotes, links to references, etc.
That is one face of Science, secretive, arbitrary and restricted peer review of submissions. I say “restricted peer” because Science has a tiny number of reviewers, compared to your peers, who review submissions. If you want “peer review,” you should publish with an open source journal that enlists all of your peers as reviewers, not just a few.
There is another face of Science, which appeared last December without any trace of irony at all:
Does journal peer review miss best and brightest? by David Shultz, which reads in part:
Sometimes greatness is hard to spot. Before going on to lead the Chicago Bulls to six NBA championships, Michael Jordan was famously cut from his high school basketball team. Scientists often face rejection of their own—in their case, the gatekeepers aren’t high school coaches, but journal editors and peers they select to review submitted papers. A study published today indicates that this system does a reasonable job of predicting the eventual interest in most papers, but it may shoot an air ball when it comes to identifying really game-changing research.
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There is a serious chink in the armor, though: All 14 of the most highly cited papers in the study were rejected by the three elite journals, and 12 of those were bounced before they could reach peer review. The finding suggests that unconventional research that falls outside the established lines of thought may be more prone to rejection from top journals, Siler says.
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Science publishes research showing its methods are flawed and yet it takes no notice. Perhaps its rejection of Andy’s paper isn’t so strange. It must have not traveled far enough down the stairs.
I first saw Andy’s paper in a tweet by Mick Watson.