Peer review as conflict

I read with interest Melinda Baldwin’s article “In referees we trust?” on the historical development of peer review (Physics Today, February 2017, page 44 ). She is not the first to suggest that William Whewell should be considered the inventor of peer review. I did not take the trouble to respond to Alex Csiszar’s comment to that effect in Nature last year, ¹ but I now see that this curious idea could become entrenched just by being repeated. It is important to distinguish between explicitly establishing the idea of peer review and more or less systematically applying it.

Although Baldwin writes that Henry Oldenburg “rarely consulted outside opinions,” the Council Minutes of 1 March 1665 explicitly note “that the Philosophical Transactions, to be composed by Mr Oldenburg, be printed on the first Monday of every month, if he have sufficient matter for it, and that the tract be licensed by the Council of the Society, being first reviewed by some of the members of the same.” ² It made sense that the Royal Society did not want to see printed opinions that could bring shame on its reputation. Every book was to be checked by members before being given any imprimatur. Hence in June 1664, the council decided that “in case Mr Hooke’s microscopical observations should be printed by order of the society, they might be perused and examined by some members of the society.” ³

In any case, one did not have to wait as late as the 1830s to see peer review of scientific papers at work, since already in the 1760s the Paris Academy of Sciences had its own publication committee that reviewed papers and made explicit comments before publication. It even often required authors to cite previous work on a given subject as a condition of publication. For example, a corresponding member of the Academy, Pierre-Toussaint Navier, who submitted a paper on the dissolution of mercury in acid, was asked by the members of the committee to “add the citations mentioned in the referee’s report.” ⁴

As for Max Planck, he did not like, as editor, to reject papers from colleagues and much preferred to suggest ways to render them publishable. Baldwin should have mentioned the work of Lewis Pyenson, who studied in detail how Planck handled his task as editor of Annalen der Physik. ⁵

The mechanism of peer review evolved over centuries, obviously, and became very formal only in the middle of the 20th century. But before promoting Whewell as the inventor of that practice, historians would do well to extend research beyond the British islands. Also, there were many scientific organizations and journals in Europe before the 1830s.