Is the Peer Reviewed Journal Dead?
Tony Brown, one of LITFL’s great heroes and until recently Editor of Emergency Medicine Australasia, got landed with the topic of ‘Is the Peer Reviewed Journal Dead?’ at smaccGOLD. Tony gives a remarkably insightful talk examining what the purpose of the peer reviewed journal is and what the problems are. I loved listening to this.
His surprising conclusions:
- peer reviewed journals are not there to serve the reader!
- peer review does not work!
- most papers are rubbish!
- medical publishing has been hijacked by Big Pharma!
- publishers restrict access!
He suggests some solutions that may resurrect the peer-reviewed journal:
- publish everything
- publish then filter
- publish articles focused on the reader: education and translation
- do less research, that is higher quality, and taken away from the drug the companies
- publish open access
Here is the audio
To listen to all the smaccGOLD talks as they are released subscribe to the SMACC podcast on iTunes.
Further reading
Here are some recommended links (recommended by me, not necessarily Tony!):
- Dogma and Pseudoaxioms (LITFL CCC)
- Medical Reversal (LITFL CCC)
- Time to publish then filter? (LITFL)
- The Wisdom of Crowd Review (LITFL)
- Pens, Swords and Peer Review (LITFL)
- Ioannidis JP. Why most published research findings are false. PLoS Med. 2005 Aug;2(8):e124.
- Schriger DL, Altman DG. Inadequate post-publication review of medical research. BMJ. 2010 Aug 11;341:c3803.
- Bad Pharma by Ben Goldacre (Google Books)
- Richard Smith: Is the pharmaceutical industry like the mafia?
- Deadly Medicines and Organised Crime by Peter Gotzcshe (Google Books)
- The Truth About The Drug Companies: How They Deceive Us by Marcia Angell (Google Books)
- The 25th Anniversary edition of Emergency Medicine Australasia (February 2014)
Chris is an Intensivist and ECMO specialist at The Alfred ICU, where he is Deputy Director (Education). He is a Clinical Adjunct Associate Professor at Monash University, the Lead for the Clinician Educator Incubator programme, and a CICM First Part Examiner.
He is an internationally recognised Clinician Educator with a passion for helping clinicians learn and for improving the clinical performance of individuals and collectives. He was one of the founders of the FOAM movement (Free Open-Access Medical education) has been recognised for his contributions to education with awards from ANZICS, ANZAHPE, and ACEM.
His one great achievement is being the father of three amazing children.
On Bluesky, he is @precordialthump.bsky.social and on the site that Elon has screwed up, he is @precordialthump.
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