#peer-review

#peer-review

Researchers have been sneaking secret messages into papers to manipulate AI tools into providing favorable peer-reviews, a practice uncovered by Nature and highlighted by Nikkei Asia.

Time is a precious commodity for research scientists, and while technology can aid in efficiency, tasks like literature reading and peer review resist automation.

At the start of this year, Nature began a co-reviewing project designed to encourage established academics to mentor early-career researchers (ECRs) in carrying out peer review.

Academia traditionally views Wikipedia as unreliable due to its lack of peer-reviewed content, yet its decentralized model could offer valuable insights for knowledge creation.

Peer-review in the humanities plays a crucial role in maintaining academic standards and fostering intellectual rigor, but its effectiveness hinges on mutual respect and clarity between scholars.

As of 2025, the NIH has awarded about $2.8 billion less than usual at this point over the past five years, indicating a restoration of funding flow.

"Mawson" is Anthony Mawson, an epidemiologist and former academic who has published several papers alleging a connection between childhood vaccines and autism. (Any such connection has been thoroughly debunked.)

"My main goal was to have students write a longer (10-page) paper with several rounds of revisions. Pedagogically, I also wanted to experiment with teaching writing in the same way one would teach art or music."

The Royal Society's Philosophical Transactions was the first journal to establish peer review, creating a vital process that has evolved over 200 years.