Scientific Integrity, Peer Review and an Interview With Dr Kerry Redican.

Abstract

Scientists are experiencing unprecedented challenges to the time honored conventions that usually guide consensus building and health communications. This editorial offers a primer on this journal's peer review process and argues that professional societies, the private sector and non-governmental organizations need to fill the void being created by disinvestments in our federal and state public health infrastructure. The process that guides our peer reviewers and composite reviewers is described. The vital importance of peer reviewers sharing their expertise with fellow scientists via narrative feedback on studies is emphasized. An interview with an exemplary composite reviewer, our Associate Editor in Chief, Dr Kerry Redican, is offered as a way to underscore the rigor needed to preserve the integrity of the scientific method at a time when science is being threatened by ideological clashes.