The peer-review system is often described as the “gold standard” for determining scientific merit. A study published on Thursday gives that belief some empirical affirmation.
The study shows that success rates of scientific projects, as measured by citations and patents, strongly correlate with the scores those projects were given under the peer-review process at the National Institutes of Health.
The analysis, published in Science, covered more than 130,000 research projects financed by the NIH from 1980 to 2008. It found that a drop of one standard deviation in NIH peer-review scores is associated with 15 percent fewer citations, 7 percent fewer publications, 19 percent fewer “high impact” publications, and 14 percent fewer associated patents.
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