{"id":84,"date":"2011-07-25T18:46:04","date_gmt":"2011-07-25T17:46:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/socialscienceresearchfunding.co.uk\/?p=84"},"modified":"2011-07-26T08:22:48","modified_gmt":"2011-07-26T07:22:48","slug":"it%e2%80%99s-a-bad-review-we-got-a-bad-review-%e2%80%a6oh-lord","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/socialscienceresearchfunding.co.uk\/?p=84","title":{"rendered":"“It\u2019s a bad review, we got a bad review \u2026oh lord”"},"content":{"rendered":"
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A large sandpit and a pier (re)view<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

A healthy portion of food for thought has been served up by the publication of a RAND Europe<\/a> report into alternatives to peer review for research project funding<\/a>.\u00a0 Peer review is something that I – as an alleged research funding professional -have rather taken for granted as being the natural and obvious way to allocate (increasingly) scarce resources.\u00a0 How do we decide who gets funded?\u00a0 Well, let’s ask experts to report, and then make a judgement based upon what those experts say.\u00a0 I’ve been aware of other ways, but I’ve not given them much thought – I’m a poacher, not a gamekeeper.<\/p>\n

The Guardian Higher Education Network<\/a> ran a poll<\/a> over the second half of last week, and a whopping 70.8% of those who voted said that they had had a research proposal turned down<\/del>\u00a0 thought the process should be changed.\u00a0 I’m aware of the limitations of peer review -it’s only as good as the peers, and the effort they’re prepared to make and the care they’re prepared to take with their review.\u00a0 Anyone who has had any involvement in research funding will be aware of examples where comments come back that are frankly baffling: drawing odd conclusions, obsessing over irrelevancies, wanting the research to be about something else, making unsupported statements, or assertions that are just demonstrably false.<\/p>\n