Two hats too many

We view ourselves as scientists as very intelligent, extremely hard-working, and highly creative, though perhaps more competitive than we care to admit. But no one seems to recognize the high incidence of a serious medical problem among investigators — ‘multiple personality disorder’.Of course I say this with tongue planted firmly in cheek, but it's not too far off the mark when we consider our dual roles as authors and as peer reviewers. Most of us review the literature (hopefully beyond that accessible on-line) and cite earlier work, to give credit where it is due, to point out unsettled questions, and to support our conclusions. This is both expected and demanded of us by the norms of the field. One would thus imagine that as referees of submitted papers, we would bring to our evaluations the same careful analysis, thoughtful consideration, and scholarship that goes into our own research and manuscript preparation. Yet we are all too well aware that this is not always the case. Even to neutral third parties, many reviews seem to be hasty, intemperate, biased, and/or narrow-minded.Why is this? How do most of us, with a real love of what we do and commitment to getting to the ‘truth’ of the biology, wind up as Mr (or Ms) Hyde alternatives to our usual Dr Jekyll personas? In some (hopefully rare) cases, the evaluator is truly ignorant of the subject matter, or a review is intentionally damning to provide the referee with a competitive advantage, or the intent is to suppress work disagreeing with what the reviewer previously published. More often, time constraints, subconscious prejudice, and the difficulty of seeing past existing dogma are offered up as excuses for poor reviewing. But none of these seems irremediable.The major defects in most reviews fall into three general categories: gratuitous dismissal of the potential value of the work, statements of ‘fact’ left unsupported by specific citation, and demands for new experiments that are either impractical, patently impossible, or unlikely to change the proffered interpretation. The first is the easiest to eliminate — it simply requires the reviewer to step back from the initial emotional response to the paper (‘What a crock!’) and ask ‘What if?’. What if the authors added some new data or revised their interpretation? Would the product be a significant contribution that enhances our understanding of a subject? We may be rightfully disappointed that the present manuscript falls short of the ideal, but constructive suggestions and realistic (even generous) appraisal of the study's potential worth are much more useful to editors and authors alike than hasty or ill-considered dismissals.Fixing the second only takes a bit of extra time. With the widespread existence of personal electronic libraries and online journal access, it is not too much to ask that any statement cast as fact in a review be referenced. This forces the reviewer to check that his/her memory is correct, it provides the authors with guidance to research they might have missed, and it allows rebuttal based on the specific material the referee thinks contradicts the submitted results or limits the latter's novelty. This seems quite reasonable — if the authors are held to this standard in their submissions, how can the referee decide the fate of person-years of effort without comparable attention to the research record?Correcting the third involves a simple reality check — are the results of any requested experiments really likely to change the strength and, more importantly, the conclusion of the paper? How long would the extra experiments take? Are the delay and cost imposed reasonable for the possible benefit? (New knockout or transgenic mice seem to me beyond the pale except in extraordinary situations!)Editors have a crucial role to play in improving matters. They can help by tossing away without further consideration those reviews that fail to meet the standards discussed here and, when this is a pattern, avoiding the negligent referees in the future (whatever their ‘stature’ in the field).Mr Hyde's derangement was drug-induced. We (I trust) have no such excuse for our frequent transformation from scientists committed to seeking new knowledge and reporting it professionally into reviewers unmindful of the intellectual standards that guide our daily activities. As challenging as it may be, I am hopeful that we all can effect self-cures and eliminate the ‘splits’ from our personalities.If you have an interesting viewpoint on any issue relating to biological research that you would like to put before a general readership in a My Word article of about 800–900 words, email your proposal to: cbiol@current-biology.com