Should Industry Scientists Participate in Governmental Peer Review?
21 Mar 2006 in Information Quality, Peer Review
Barrow and Conrad say "yes."
A seemingly intractable issue in governmental peer review is the selection of the peer reviewers. It should come as no surprise that the outcome of governmental peer review can be significantly affected by who serves on these panels. So there often is a battle over the selection process. Recently, a skirmish in this battle has arisen over whether, and if so under what conditions, it is appropriate for industry-affiliated scientists to serve on these panels.
Environmental Health Perspectives, a peer reviewed journal published monthly by the National Environmental Health Sciences Institute, published in March 2006 letters
to the editor by Merrill Goozner and Jennifer Sass. Goozner works for the Center for Science in the Public Interest and Sass is employed by the Natural Resources Defense Council. Both organizations can be fairly characterized as advocates for stringent government regulation; indeed, in her letter Sass describes NRDC as "an environmental nonprofit organization with an interest in ensuring that regulations of toxic chemicals are as health protective as feasible."
The letters respond to a previous commentary
in EHP by Craig Barrow and James Conrad. Barrow works for the Dow Chemical Company and Conrad for the American Chemistry Council, a trade association of chemicals manufacturers. Following the two letters in the March 2006 issue, Messrs. Barrow and Conrad respond
to their critics.
A caveat about the letters: They are not peer reviewed articles. At the top of the correspondence section, EHP publishes the following disclaimer:
The correspondence section is a public forum and, as such, is not peer-reviewed. EHP is not responsible for the accuracy, currency, or reliability of personal opinion expressed herein; it is the sole responsibility of the authors. EHP neither endorses nor disputes their published commentary.
We will investigate the question of whether the original commentary by Barrow
and Conrad was peer reviewed and post an update.
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