Scientific Method, the Neglected Reference in Peer Reviewing

Abstract

Peer review of manuscripts submitted for eventual publication in scientific journals has been established for several centuries. It constitutes a mandatory requirement for the edition of scientific results. However, despite the plausible efforts by appointed reviewers/referees it is far from flawless. Disagreements between the parts may or may not be surmountable in terms of intersubjectivity. But besides this there is a neglected reference that, given the scientific nature of the material involved, should never be set aside, scientific method. Instead, the term scientific rigor is often used, which does play a part within the former, but it is not synonymous with it. Scientific method implies both logic and non-logical ways of thinking, amalgamating inferential techniques with creativity and ingenuity. Thus, an eductive process for raising an original question or scientific problem is further systematized by abduction of hypothesis that predicts a logical solution to it based on the supporting theory. Questioning methodology in a scientific report should abide by the pursued objective, i.e., answering the original question, and the soundness of the (logically) abducted hypothesis, both of which should be implied in the respective title. All these are structural elements of scientific method. However, reviewers frequently bypass these structural components which may validate a certain study, whilst focusing on flaws and imposing subjective (stablished) ideas that often tend to replace the original objective. This scenario is illustrated with actual interactive examples of peer reviewing cases that show a contrast between the author´s position resorting to scientific method vs. referee´s arguments that do not. Despite the specialized nature of said examples (ecology of diatoms) the central problem is discussed in terms of philosophical bases of science and scientific method that are extensive to most fields of knowledge.