Nature medicine recently acknowledged our work as science bloggers by admitting
We are not suggesting, however, that peer review is infallible. Nonetheless, as editors, we hope that anyone accepting an invitation to review a manuscript considers that commitment as being of comparable importance to the other responsibilities of a busy researcher. And although we know that more pressing issues can take precedence over reviewing a manuscript, we still expect that the same level of integrity and objective, critical analysis will be applied to the assessment of the manuscript under review as is applied to the referee’s own work.
In German we say “blauäugig” which translates to “wonderful naive”. There are so many examples of non-integrity and non-objectivity of published research where the peer review failed to a large extent – many examples here and at other sites like retractionwatch or badscience. All these papers by Friedhelm Herrmann, Marion Brach and Roland Mertelsmann with the most recent examples by Carsten Carlberg (“It’s all her fault, and probably today is the worst day of her life when the world sees what she has done”“) and Silvia Bulfone Paus (“it was Elena and Vadim and the journal editors should have caught us“)
With the pervasiveness of the Internet, and the speed of communication it permits, commentary and criticism of research findings can occur almost immediately after their online publi cation. This medium should be actively embraced by the research community as a dynamic forum.
There is not even a trackback possibility for that Nature medicine editorial – the whole blogger’s laudatio thing reeks of hypocrisy.