{"id":421927,"date":"2026-01-18T16:13:37","date_gmt":"2026-01-18T15:13:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?p=421927"},"modified":"2026-01-18T16:13:40","modified_gmt":"2026-01-18T15:13:40","slug":"the-problem-with-peer-review","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?p=421927","title":{"rendered":"The Problem with \u2018Peer Review\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"723\" height=\"482\" data-attachment-id=\"421932\" data-permalink=\"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?attachment_id=421932\" data-orig-file=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/0AQM_aSJC0bx6EEQ4FtYE-7ZFVD1yUBuRIeVseTHJf4cfx57EmQIyhYWJCaWKFXyZdM8hjnqia42C9tNNudk5h_dulpszQdOQQ4pKcvG6ylG-VTTwzUUrFuzUffsjgOQi-1.jpeg?fit=1364%2C910&amp;ssl=1\" data-orig-size=\"1364,910\" data-comments-opened=\"1\" data-image-meta=\"{&quot;aperture&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;credit&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;camera&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;caption&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;created_timestamp&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;copyright&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;focal_length&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;iso&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;shutter_speed&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;title&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;orientation&quot;:&quot;0&quot;}\" data-image-title=\"0AQM_aSJC0bx6EEQ4FtYE-7ZFVD1yUBuRIeVseTHJf4cfx57EmQIyhYWJCaWKFXyZdM8hjnqia42C9tNNudk5h_dulpszQdOQQ4pKcvG6ylG-VTTwzUUrFuzUffsjgOQi (1)\" data-image-description=\"\" data-image-caption=\"\" data-large-file=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/0AQM_aSJC0bx6EEQ4FtYE-7ZFVD1yUBuRIeVseTHJf4cfx57EmQIyhYWJCaWKFXyZdM8hjnqia42C9tNNudk5h_dulpszQdOQQ4pKcvG6ylG-VTTwzUUrFuzUffsjgOQi-1.jpeg?fit=723%2C482&amp;ssl=1\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/0AQM_aSJC0bx6EEQ4FtYE-7ZFVD1yUBuRIeVseTHJf4cfx57EmQIyhYWJCaWKFXyZdM8hjnqia42C9tNNudk5h_dulpszQdOQQ4pKcvG6ylG-VTTwzUUrFuzUffsjgOQi-1.jpeg?resize=723%2C482&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"A large concrete cube sculpture with the words 'MAJOR CHANGES' prominently displayed on one side, set in a park area with trees and a building in the background.\" class=\"wp-image-421932\" srcset=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/0AQM_aSJC0bx6EEQ4FtYE-7ZFVD1yUBuRIeVseTHJf4cfx57EmQIyhYWJCaWKFXyZdM8hjnqia42C9tNNudk5h_dulpszQdOQQ4pKcvG6ylG-VTTwzUUrFuzUffsjgOQi-1.jpeg?resize=1024%2C683&amp;ssl=1 1024w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/0AQM_aSJC0bx6EEQ4FtYE-7ZFVD1yUBuRIeVseTHJf4cfx57EmQIyhYWJCaWKFXyZdM8hjnqia42C9tNNudk5h_dulpszQdOQQ4pKcvG6ylG-VTTwzUUrFuzUffsjgOQi-1.jpeg?resize=300%2C200&amp;ssl=1 300w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/0AQM_aSJC0bx6EEQ4FtYE-7ZFVD1yUBuRIeVseTHJf4cfx57EmQIyhYWJCaWKFXyZdM8hjnqia42C9tNNudk5h_dulpszQdOQQ4pKcvG6ylG-VTTwzUUrFuzUffsjgOQi-1.jpeg?resize=768%2C512&amp;ssl=1 768w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/0AQM_aSJC0bx6EEQ4FtYE-7ZFVD1yUBuRIeVseTHJf4cfx57EmQIyhYWJCaWKFXyZdM8hjnqia42C9tNNudk5h_dulpszQdOQQ4pKcvG6ylG-VTTwzUUrFuzUffsjgOQi-1.jpeg?resize=640%2C427&amp;ssl=1 640w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/0AQM_aSJC0bx6EEQ4FtYE-7ZFVD1yUBuRIeVseTHJf4cfx57EmQIyhYWJCaWKFXyZdM8hjnqia42C9tNNudk5h_dulpszQdOQQ4pKcvG6ylG-VTTwzUUrFuzUffsjgOQi-1.jpeg?resize=1200%2C801&amp;ssl=1 1200w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/0AQM_aSJC0bx6EEQ4FtYE-7ZFVD1yUBuRIeVseTHJf4cfx57EmQIyhYWJCaWKFXyZdM8hjnqia42C9tNNudk5h_dulpszQdOQQ4pKcvG6ylG-VTTwzUUrFuzUffsjgOQi-1.jpeg?w=1364&amp;ssl=1 1364w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 723px) 100vw, 723px\" \/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">From <a href=\"https:\/\/dailysceptic.org\/2026\/01\/17\/the-problem-with-peer-review\/#comments\">The Daily Sceptic<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">By\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/dailysceptic.org\/author\/dr-james-alexander\/\">James Alexander<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"723\" height=\"469\" data-attachment-id=\"421928\" data-permalink=\"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?attachment_id=421928\" data-orig-file=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/image-330.png?fit=788%2C511&amp;ssl=1\" data-orig-size=\"788,511\" data-comments-opened=\"1\" data-image-meta=\"{&quot;aperture&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;credit&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;camera&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;caption&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;created_timestamp&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;copyright&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;focal_length&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;iso&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;shutter_speed&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;title&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;orientation&quot;:&quot;0&quot;}\" data-image-title=\"image\" data-image-description=\"\" data-image-caption=\"\" data-large-file=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/image-330.png?fit=723%2C469&amp;ssl=1\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/image-330.png?resize=723%2C469&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"Concrete structure with inscriptions discussing major changes and language processing in aphasia.\" class=\"wp-image-421928\" srcset=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/image-330.png?w=788&amp;ssl=1 788w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/image-330.png?resize=300%2C195&amp;ssl=1 300w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/image-330.png?resize=768%2C498&amp;ssl=1 768w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/image-330.png?resize=640%2C415&amp;ssl=1 640w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 723px) 100vw, 723px\" \/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">In May 2017 a sculpture was&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.nature.com\/articles\/nature.2017.22060\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">displayed<\/a>&nbsp;at the Moscow Higher School of Economics, believe it or not, in honour of the great secular-rational god Peer Review. The sculpture takes the form of a die displaying on its five visible sides the possible results of review \u2014 \u201cAccept\u201d, \u201cMinor Changes\u201d, \u201cMajor Changes\u201d, \u201cRevise and Resubmit\u201d and \u201cReject\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Peer review. What is it? Why does it matter? Where did it come from? How old is it?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">A fairly solid&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.cambridge.org\/core\/journals\/historical-journal\/article\/royal-society-and-the-prehistory-of-peer-review-16651965\/93B903FD4D6561AA7224C62EE57B0C18\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">academic article<\/a>&nbsp;\u2013 Noah Moxham and Aileen Fyfe, \u2018The Royal Society and the Prehistory of Peer Review, 1665-1965\u2019, published in&nbsp;<em>The Historical Journal<\/em>&nbsp;61 (2018), pp. 863-889 \u2013 begins with an untruth stated by the House of Commons committee on Science and Technology in 2011.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\">\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">In one form or another, peer review has always been regarded as crucial to the reputation and reliability of scientific research.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Always? Fact-check: False. It\u2019s a lie, or an error. Apparently, many people think that peer review was invented in the 17th century. Not so. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Let me summarise Moxham and Fyfe\u2019s findings:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>\u201cPeer review\u201d was not named, they say, until the 1970s.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>In relation to the Royal Society the first editor of the\u00a0<em>Transactions<\/em>\u00a0in the 17th century actually sought copy from authors.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>In 1751 someone wrote a satire exposing some of the very silly papers that had been published in the\u00a0<em>Transactions.<\/em><\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>In 1752 the Royal Society took responsibility, financial and editorial, for the\u00a0<em>Transactions<\/em>\u00a0which, until then, had been informally arranged.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>In 1774 the Royal Society refused, however, to take collective responsibility for what was published: saying the responsibility remained with the author.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>In 1831 Babbage asked for more careful consideration of papers and in 1832 written reports on papers were asked for.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>In 1896 Joseph Lister created committees to deal with submitted papers.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>In 1936 someone complained that too much \u201croutine research\u201d was being published. This sounds like we are approaching our modernity.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>By the 1990s peer review was seen as normal.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">In other words, what we call refereeing was sometimes evident in the early days, when an editor sought someone else\u2019s opinion, but everything was very informal until the 19th century, and, in fact, there was no firm protocol until the late 20th century.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">That is, almost all the glories of science were achieved when the system was informal, or before there was even such a thing as an informal system.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Along the way there is an interesting tale about one John James Waterston, a 19th-century Scot. He was first to venture a kinetic theory of gases. But his paper was dismissed as rubbish by Sir John William Lubbock: indeed, it was archived by the Royal Society, i.e., not returned to the author. Since Waterston had made no copy for himself, he had to rewrite it from scratch. Fifty years later, Lord Rayleigh, recognising the value of the archived original, had it belatedly published. Rayleigh wrote:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\">\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The history of [Waterston\u2019s] paper suggests that highly speculative investigations, especially by an unknown author, are best brought before the world through some other channel than a scientific society, which naturally hesitates to admit into its printed records matter of uncertain value. Perhaps one may go further and say that a young author who believes himself capable of great things would usually do well to secure favourable recognition of the scientific world by work whose scope is limited, and whose value is easily judged, before embarking upon higher flights.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">To translate into modern terms: send predictable box-ticking rubbish to&nbsp;<em>Nature&nbsp;<\/em>or&nbsp;<em>Science&nbsp;<\/em>or the&nbsp;<em>Transactions<\/em>&nbsp;or the&nbsp;<em>Lancet<\/em>. And send original science, unless you are well-known to the editors and can overcome their prejudices using wine and biscuits, er, we are not sure where, but somewhere, and good luck.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">In conspiratorial circles this state of things is sometimes blamed on, believe it or not, Robert Maxwell. Robert Maxwell, who he?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"> Well, Jeffrey Epstein\u2019s spiritual father-in-law. Both remarkable Great Gatsbys, and, as such, still unexplained. No one knows how R.M. died. No one knows how J.E. died. They were in Intelligence: query, whose intelligence? <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">They were in <strong>Science<\/strong>, query, but\u00a0<em>what<\/em>\u00a0was their interest in it? They had Money: query, whose money?\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>Private Eye<\/em>\u00a0made much fun of Capn Bob, but was perhaps less acute, or simply less interested, in Squire Jeff. I thought I\u2019d look into the dark side of this story, but failed, as my library here does not have a copy of John Preston\u2019s recent biography of Maxwell, the older biography is missing, and the only library books about Maxwell were\u00a0<em>two<\/em>, yes, two, separate books of jokes about him, both published in 1992, shortly after his death. Incidentally, the jokes were variable: but perhaps the best one I read this afternoon was: \u201cWhat is the difference between Robert Maxwell and the Royal Navy? One rules the waves and one waives the rules.\u201d Oh go on, there was another one: \u201cWhat is long, brown and goes fft as it hits the water? Robert Maxwell\u2019s last cigar.\u201d Why have no similar joke books been published about Jeffrey Epstein? There, my friends, is the difference between the 1990s and the 2020s, and also the difference, perhaps, between the UK and the USA.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Anyhow, isn\u2019t it fascinating that, in the more conspiratorial corners of our attempt to make sense of the world, \u2018peer review\u2019 is sometimes tangled up in the spokes of Jeffrey Epstein\u2019s fatal bicycle? Not only because Gates, Chomsky&nbsp;<em>et al.<\/em>&nbsp;were Epstein\u2019s brothers-in-arms, but for the very odd reason that we hear that Robert Maxwell, Ghislaine\u2019s doomed father, not only made his fortune from academic publishing but also invented \u2018peer review\u2019.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Let us look into Maxwell. I remember that when I was young Maxwell was one of those unaccountable and unarguable titans, the equal of Murdoch, but that this all exploded when he suddenly died and his empire was found to be established on embezzlement. He died in 1991 (incidentally, when I was an undergraduate at Lubbock\u2019s\u00a0<em>and<\/em>\u00a0Rayleigh\u2019s old college). <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Born Jan Hoch in 1923, Maxwell has a story which, in its Wikipedia version, is a bit obscure. He was Czech, served in the British army, and then, after the War, used \u2018contacts\u2019 in the Allied Occupation authorities to buy his way into publishing, becoming distributor for Springer-Verlag, publisher of scientific books, and eventually in 1951 buying three-quarters of a publishing firm which he renamed Pergamon Press \u2013 oddly, named after a city in Turkey where there used be a king with a good library. Pergamon Press was apparently the source of his fortune: he was eased out in 1969, but bought it again in 1974, and eventually\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.tandfonline.com\/doi\/pdf\/10.1080\/03054985.2024.2348448\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">sold it in 1991<\/a>\u00a0for \u00a3440 million to Elsevier, which still possesses all its extant titles, all those hundreds of academic journals that Capn Bob launched across the seven academic seas. In the meantime, he bought the Mirror Group in 1984, and this is what made him famous, though it was not what made him rich.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Now, there are all sorts of dubious things about Maxwell. Intelligence: on which side? MI6? KGB? Contacts: who exactly? Involved in German scientific publishing? How? Found the money to buy out Butterworth-Springer. From where? But who cares: he was obviously a hustler, the sort of person who generates money simply by moving about and scraping about. The fact is, there\u00a0<em>will<\/em>\u00a0be dubiety in the original story, but it is\u00a0<em>very<\/em>\u00a0unlikely to concern <strong>\u2018peer review\u2019<\/strong>. There was no money in peer review, and I doubt Maxwell, though he obviously had some genius, got as far as thinking\u00a0<em>that\u00a0<\/em>one through. He was interested, as I say, in quality (and money) and probably left quality to his well-wined scientist guests to think about.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Nay, the fact is that \u2018peer review\u2019 is all about self-affirming bureaucracies. Old journals were amateur and aristocratic affairs. The original&nbsp;<em>Transactions of the Royal Society<\/em>&nbsp;was paid for by individual subscribers (about 750 in the 19th century), all of whom received a copy, an extra 100 copies printed for use rather than sale. But nowadays the whole thing is a grotesque machine. Elsevier, we are told, has a higher profit&nbsp;<em>margin<\/em>&nbsp;\u00ad\u2013 of course, not absolute profit \u2013 than Google or Amazon, because governments, universities and scientists themselves pay for the matter published and also the editing of that matter. It is&nbsp;<em>gratis<\/em>, goes in a circle, and the unpaid labour then pays for it, via a set of institutions dominated by a logic no one can quite dismiss. All Elsevier has to do is publish something and sell it back to universities whose members have laboured, unpaid, to write for it, and also edited it, reviewed it, etc. It is a grand monopoly capitalist conspiracy surviving on the corpse of collective responsibility.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">And peer review costs \u2018em nothing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I don\u2019t have much peer reviewing to do, as I am not a success in any narrow modern academic field: my interests are, cough, too broad (that\u2019s my way of putting it: others would say too shallow). I seem to be on someone\u2019s list for conservatism and tradition, since I published things on these once or twice, and obviously I am 20th on a list of possible names for these subjects. Most of the stuff I read is worthy rubbish, and some of it unworthy. I think only once was I enthusiastic \u2013 about a short article in which someone kicked the shins of Jeremy Waldron.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I don\u2019t think anyone complains too much about\u00a0<em>writing<\/em>\u00a0for peer review, and there is certainly not enough opposition to the entire system of peer review (there should be more). What everyone dislikes are the fact that\u00a0<em>their research is dismissed by peer reviewers<\/em>\u00a0for rather arbitrary reasons. Even the most liberal academic complains about this: it is one subject on which almost everyone can agree. Everyone wants peer review for others and intellectual freedom for themselves.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The&nbsp;<em>Guardian<\/em>&nbsp;has a couple of good articles on peer review and academic publishing. As early as 2003 Michael Eisen&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/education\/2003\/oct\/09\/research.highereducation\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">argued<\/a>&nbsp;that everyone should be freely available to everyone. And in 2017 Stephen Buranyi&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/science\/2017\/jun\/27\/profitable-business-scientific-publishing-bad-for-science\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">pointed out<\/a>&nbsp;not only that publishers extract much free work from scientists, but, worse, that \u201cthe publishing industry exerts too much influence over what scientists choose to study, which is ultimately bad for science itself\u201d.&nbsp;I\u2019d say that this is part of the problem: the other half is centralisation, not only of publication but also of funding. Research grants are an equally major form of monopoly control. Repeat old research? Here\u2019s a grant. Trying something original? Silence. And worse: in the humanities, trying something controversial? Rejection and perhaps even the beginning of reputational death and cancellation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">It is the Buranyi piece from 2017 that argued that \u201cfew people in the last century have done more to shape the way science is conducted today than Maxwell\u201d. Let us see what the argument is. He explains that there was a view after the Second World War that British science was good but British scientific publishing was bad. The directors of Butterworths were ex-intelligence: the Government combined Butterworths with renowned German publisher Springer and hired Maxwell to manage it. When Butterworth decided to get out, Maxwell found \u00a313,000 to buy it. This was in 1951. It was Maxwell\u2019s collaborator, Paul Rosbaud, the scientific editor, who had also previously worked in Intelligence during the War, who worked out what to do.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The scientific societies that had traditionally created journals were unwieldy institutions that tended to move slowly, hampered by internal debates between members about the boundaries of their field. Rosbaud had none of these constraints. All he needed to do was to convince a prominent academic that their particular field required a new journal to showcase it properly and install that person at the helm of it. Pergamon would then begin selling subscriptions to university libraries, which suddenly had a lot of government money to spend.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Interestingly, Maxwell actually at this stage operated a seller\u2019s market, more or less approaching scientists to see if they had anything they had to hand that he could publish, as Oldenburg of the Royal Society had done for the\u00a0<em>Transactions\u00a0<\/em>in the 17th century.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em><strong>O tempora, O mores!<\/strong>\u00a0<\/em>I know I wish that system was still in place.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Apologies for returning to the Ghislaine-Epstein-Gates-Mandelson-Andrew story, but doesn\u2019t the following excerpt sound as if Maxwell Senior invented the protocol that young Jeffrey was to inherit: with all that hobnobbing with the great and good, including the scientific great and good?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\">\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">By then, Maxwell had taken Rosbaud\u2019s business model and turned it into something all his own. Scientific conferences tended to be drab, low-ceilinged affairs, but when Maxwell returned to the Geneva conference that year, he rented a house in nearby Collonge-Bellerive, a picturesque town on the lakeshore, where he entertained guests at parties with booze, cigars and sailboat trips. Scientists had never seen anything like him. \u201cHe always said we don\u2019t compete on sales, we compete on authors,\u201d&nbsp;Albert Henderson, a former deputy director at Pergamon, told me. \u201cWe would attend conferences specifically looking to recruit editors for new journals.\u201d There are tales of parties on the roof of the Athens Hilton, of gifts of Concorde flights, of scientists being put on a chartered boat tour of the Greek islands to plan their new journal.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">This, apparently, is the story. Maxwell: journals, more journals, grifting and huckstering, at first 40 journals, then 150, sharpening his suits, buying a Rolls Royce, leasing Headington Hall. He should have stuck to this: he was evidently quite good at it, and could have remained respectable, especially if he had avoided lapsing into embezzlement. (There is no evidence he added young women into any of his inducements.) Not that it was admirable. It was, of course, not admirable at all. Academics did not know how to resist. \u201cIf a serious new journal appeared, scientists would simply request that their university library subscribe to that one as well.\u201d And everyone still wonders why Thatcher&nbsp;<em>et al.<\/em>&nbsp;had to scale the cost of the universities down from the 1980s onwards\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">One thing about Maxwell, though: he published what scientists independently wanted to publish. He left editorial decisons to scientists. So, on balance, I think it is unlikely he had anything to do with \u2018peer review\u2019. No one mentions \u2018peer review\u2019 in relation to Maxwell. Even Brian Cox (no, not&nbsp;<em>that&nbsp;<\/em>Brian Cox, and, no, not&nbsp;<em>that<\/em>&nbsp;Brian Cox either), who worked with him at Pergamon for 30 years, and wrote a&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/onlinelibrary.wiley.com\/doi\/epdf\/10.1087\/095315102760319233\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">brief account<\/a>&nbsp;of their collaboration in 1998, republished in 2002, mentions nothing about peer review. Instead, the achievement is:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\">\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">In the 40 years between its founding and its sale to Elsevier in 1991, Pergamon published over 7,000 monographs and reference works, and launched 700 journals, 418 of which were still current titles when the company was sold and 400 of which continue to this day to be sold under the Pergamon imprint within Reed Elsevier.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">It is about quantity, not quality. And peer review is \u2013 supposedly \u2013 about quality. I think Maxwell probably trusted the scientists with the science. Peer review was probably just a side-effect, a sort of mechanisation, a way of editors convincing themselves that they had a distinctive \u2018field\u2019 for their new journal. If Maxwell was at fault for anything it was for imposing quantity on everyone, after which they worked hard to make the quality match the quantity, which they could only do by narrowing down and intensifying study and increasingly constructing it in terms of what we now, in the great 21st century, call \u2018outputs\u2019 and \u2018impacts\u2019.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">But the story does not matter. Peer review is problematic for reasons not to do with its origin.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Here are some quotations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The first was uttered by <strong>Eric Weinstein<\/strong>, about an hour and a half into a\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=JLb5hZLw44s&amp;t=22s\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">podcast<\/a>\u00a0with his brother Bret Weinstein, first published on February 20th, 2020:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\">\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Peer review is a cancer from outer space. It came from the biomedical community. It invaded science. The old system, I have to say this because many people who are now professional scientists have an idea that peer review has always been in our literature, and it absolutely mother-fucking has not. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">It used to be that an editor of a journal took responsibility for the quality of the journal, which is why we had things like\u00a0<em>Nature<\/em>\u00a0crop up in the first place, because they had courageous, knowledgeable, forward-thinking editors. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I just want to be very clear, because there is a mind virus out there that says that peer review is the\u00a0<em>sine qua non<\/em>\u00a0of scientific excellence yada, yada, yada, bullshit, bullshit, bullshit\u2026 and if you don\u2019t believe me go back and learn that this is a recent invasive problem in the sciences. \u2026 <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">When Watson and Crick did the double helix, and this is the cleanest example we have, the paper was agreed should not be sent out for review, because anyone who was competent would understand immediately what its implications were. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">There are reasons that great work cannot be peer reviewed. Furthermore, you have entire fields that are existing now with electronic archives that are not peer-reviewed. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Peer review is not peer review. It sounds like peer review. It is peer injunction. It is the ability for your peers to keep the world from learning about your work\u2026 because peer review is what happens,\u00a0<em>real<\/em>\u00a0peer review is what happens, after you\u2019ve passed the bullshit thing called \u2018peer review\u2019.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Here is another quotation. As Weinstein says, original thought and speculation and brilliance has a vexed relation to peer review. But, as I have said, there is also a problem about money. This is because, unfortunately, all the money comes from great centralised caches nowadays, and this money is thrown about on the basis of peer review. The quotation below is very good, and shows that the\u00a0<em>Guardian<\/em>, in the old days, used to put out good opinion pieces. Here is<strong>\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/commentisfree\/2011\/dec\/09\/science-funding-creativ-philip-ball\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Philip Ball<\/a>\u00a0<\/strong>in 2011:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\">\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The moral seems to be that really innovative ideas don\u2019t get funded \u2013 that the system is set up to exclude them. To wring research money from government agencies, you have to write a proposal that gets assessed by anonymous experts (\u2018peer reviewers\u2019). <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">If its ambitions are too grand or its ideas too unconventional, there is a strong chance it will be trashed. So, does the money go only to \u2018safe\u2019 proposals that plod down well-trodden avenues, timidly advancing the frontiers of knowledge a few nanometres? <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">There is some truth in the accusation that grant mechanisms favour mediocrity. After all, your proposal has to specify exactly what you are going to achieve. But how can you know the results before you have done the experiments, unless you are aiming to prove the bleeding obvious?<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">And if that was not pithy enough, here is Eric Voegelin, one of those great \u00e9migre scholars who went to America. This is from&nbsp;<em>Robert B. Heilman and Eric Voegelin: A Friendship in Letters, 1944-1984<\/em>, p. 312:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\">\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">If you place money in the hands of academic mediocrities, it will hardly improve scholarship or advance science, but rather increase the social power of mediocrity.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I doubt Maxwell intended&nbsp;<em>that<\/em>. We might blame him for it: but it was a consequence of what he and others did, not what they actually wanted from the system.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>The truth of \u2018peer review\u2019 was that it was the means by which bureaucratic controls were imposed, indeed, self-imposed, on intellectual activity. That is it.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>James Alexander is a Professor in the Department of Political Science at Bilkent University in Turkey.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In May 2017 a sculpture was displayed at the Moscow Higher School of Economics, believe it or not, in honour of the great secular-rational god Peer Review. The sculpture takes the form of a die displaying on its five visible sides the possible results of review \u2014 \u201cAccept\u201d, \u201cMinor Changes\u201d, \u201cMajor Changes\u201d, \u201cRevise and Resubmit\u201d and \u201cReject\u201d.<\/p>\n<p>Peer review. What is it? Why does it matter? Where did it come from? How old is it?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":121246920,"featured_media":421932,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_coblocks_attr":"","_coblocks_dimensions":"","_coblocks_responsive_height":"","_coblocks_accordion_ie_support":"","_crdt_document":"","advanced_seo_description":"Explore the origins and controversies of peer review in science, from its informal beginnings to its bureaucratic evolution.","jetpack_seo_html_title":"The Evolution of Peer Review: Myths and Realities Explored","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":true,"token":"eyJpbWciOiJodHRwczpcL1wvY2xpbWF0ZS1zY2llbmNlLnByZXNzXC93cC1jb250ZW50XC91cGxvYWRzXC8yMDI2XC8wMVwvMEFRTV9hU0pDMGJ4NkVFUTRGdFlFLTdaRlZEMXlVQnVSSWVWc2VUSEpmNGNmeDU3RW1RSXloWVdKQ2FXS0ZYeVpkTThoam5xaWE0MkM5dE5OdWRrNWhfZHVscHN6UWRPUVE0cEtjdkc2eWxHLVZUVHd6VVVyRnV6VWZmc2pnT1FpLTEtMTAyNHg2ODMuanBlZyIsInR4dCI6IlRoZSBQcm9ibGVtIHdpdGggXHUyMDE4UGVlciBSZXZpZXdcdTIwMTkiLCJ0ZW1wbGF0ZSI6ImhpZ2h3YXkiLCJmb250IjoiIiwiYmxvZ19pZCI6MTU1ODEyNDQ5fQ.VZzS41voSE-CKUgMpEpYQP7NKBuy4JWJ8_-_P9xXpUIMQ"},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[691835633,691829989,691827037,691840793,691820151,691831868],"class_list":{"0":"post-421927","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","6":"hentry","7":"category-uncategorized","8":"tag-academia","9":"tag-academic-freedom","10":"tag-peer-review","11":"tag-scientific-societies","12":"tag-the-science","13":"tag-universities","15":"fallback-thumbnail"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/0AQM_aSJC0bx6EEQ4FtYE-7ZFVD1yUBuRIeVseTHJf4cfx57EmQIyhYWJCaWKFXyZdM8hjnqia42C9tNNudk5h_dulpszQdOQQ4pKcvG6ylG-VTTwzUUrFuzUffsjgOQi-1.jpeg?fit=1364%2C910&ssl=1","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/paxLW1-1LLh","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":440829,"url":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?p=440829","url_meta":{"origin":421927,"position":0},"title":"From Einstein&#8217;s Disdain to the Turbidite Orthodoxy: How Blind Peer Review Stifles Scientific Progress","author":"uwe.roland.gross","date":"22\/04\/2026","format":false,"excerpt":"Shanmugam argues that while peer review serves as a quality-control mechanism for scientific publishing and grants, it suffers from deep, systemic flaws that hinder innovation and fairness. He notes that Albert Einstein expressed disdain for peer review, and that the system\u2014often conducted as double-blind review to mask identities\u2014loses the transparency\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Bias\"","block_context":{"text":"Bias","link":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?tag=bias"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/0-From-Einsteins-Disdain-to-the-Turbidite-Orthodoxy-How-Blind-Peer-Review-Stifles-Scientific-Progress.jpg?fit=784%2C1168&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/0-From-Einsteins-Disdain-to-the-Turbidite-Orthodoxy-How-Blind-Peer-Review-Stifles-Scientific-Progress.jpg?fit=784%2C1168&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/0-From-Einsteins-Disdain-to-the-Turbidite-Orthodoxy-How-Blind-Peer-Review-Stifles-Scientific-Progress.jpg?fit=784%2C1168&ssl=1&resize=525%2C300 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/0-From-Einsteins-Disdain-to-the-Turbidite-Orthodoxy-How-Blind-Peer-Review-Stifles-Scientific-Progress.jpg?fit=784%2C1168&ssl=1&resize=700%2C400 2x"},"classes":[]},{"id":440832,"url":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?p=440832","url_meta":{"origin":421927,"position":1},"title":"How Blind Peer Review Stifles Scientific Progress","author":"uwe.roland.gross","date":"22\/04\/2026","format":false,"excerpt":"The paper \"The Peer-Review Problem: A Sedimentological Perspective\" is a 2022 article (published in the Journal of the Indian Association of Sedimentologists, vol. 39, pp. 3\u201324) by G. Shanmugam, a geologist with extensive experience in process sedimentology and petroleum geology.","rel":"","context":"In \"Biomedical literature\"","block_context":{"text":"Biomedical literature","link":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?tag=biomedical-literature"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/0-How-Blind-Peer-Review-Stifles-Scientific-Progress.jpg?fit=784%2C1168&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/0-How-Blind-Peer-Review-Stifles-Scientific-Progress.jpg?fit=784%2C1168&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/0-How-Blind-Peer-Review-Stifles-Scientific-Progress.jpg?fit=784%2C1168&ssl=1&resize=525%2C300 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/0-How-Blind-Peer-Review-Stifles-Scientific-Progress.jpg?fit=784%2C1168&ssl=1&resize=700%2C400 2x"},"classes":[]},{"id":237374,"url":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?p=237374","url_meta":{"origin":421927,"position":2},"title":"The Rise and Fall of Peer Review","author":"uwe.roland.gross","date":"02\/01\/2023","format":false,"excerpt":"Adam Mastroianni\u00a0has written a marvelous article at his\u00a0substack, Experimental History, evaluating the history, the function and the misfunction of the peer review process.","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/01\/image-38.png?fit=1100%2C751&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/01\/image-38.png?fit=1100%2C751&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/01\/image-38.png?fit=1100%2C751&ssl=1&resize=525%2C300 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/01\/image-38.png?fit=1100%2C751&ssl=1&resize=700%2C400 2x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/01\/image-38.png?fit=1100%2C751&ssl=1&resize=1050%2C600 3x"},"classes":[]},{"id":415493,"url":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?p=415493","url_meta":{"origin":421927,"position":3},"title":"Peer-Reviewing Peer Review","author":"uwe.roland.gross","date":"01\/12\/2025","format":false,"excerpt":"We\u2019re told, endlessly, that science is a self-correcting machine. A pristine engine of truth where bad ideas are discarded, and good ones rise to the top like cream. We are told to\u00a0\u201cTrust The Science\u2122\u201c\u00a0because it has passed the magical, mystical trial known as\u00a0Peer Review.","rel":"","context":"In \"\u201csophisticated global networks\u201d\"","block_context":{"text":"\u201csophisticated global networks\u201d","link":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?tag=sophisticated-global-networks"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/0AQOHQLpQZ-HBGVDRmGb2-fMsaY5QvJYypJZGDrQl7uirwrO89EA237ct6PtPMweZt2iAodbOmI6gfbccHlBmcKvCbUe_4-bKJd-ZM4nbc1yb3BUQeCo9xtKHDsmmqq9X-1.jpeg?fit=1200%2C677&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/0AQOHQLpQZ-HBGVDRmGb2-fMsaY5QvJYypJZGDrQl7uirwrO89EA237ct6PtPMweZt2iAodbOmI6gfbccHlBmcKvCbUe_4-bKJd-ZM4nbc1yb3BUQeCo9xtKHDsmmqq9X-1.jpeg?fit=1200%2C677&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/0AQOHQLpQZ-HBGVDRmGb2-fMsaY5QvJYypJZGDrQl7uirwrO89EA237ct6PtPMweZt2iAodbOmI6gfbccHlBmcKvCbUe_4-bKJd-ZM4nbc1yb3BUQeCo9xtKHDsmmqq9X-1.jpeg?fit=1200%2C677&ssl=1&resize=525%2C300 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/0AQOHQLpQZ-HBGVDRmGb2-fMsaY5QvJYypJZGDrQl7uirwrO89EA237ct6PtPMweZt2iAodbOmI6gfbccHlBmcKvCbUe_4-bKJd-ZM4nbc1yb3BUQeCo9xtKHDsmmqq9X-1.jpeg?fit=1200%2C677&ssl=1&resize=700%2C400 2x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/0AQOHQLpQZ-HBGVDRmGb2-fMsaY5QvJYypJZGDrQl7uirwrO89EA237ct6PtPMweZt2iAodbOmI6gfbccHlBmcKvCbUe_4-bKJd-ZM4nbc1yb3BUQeCo9xtKHDsmmqq9X-1.jpeg?fit=1200%2C677&ssl=1&resize=1050%2C600 3x"},"classes":[]},{"id":278932,"url":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?p=278932","url_meta":{"origin":421927,"position":4},"title":"The Failure of Peer Review in Climate Science","author":"uwe.roland.gross","date":"15\/09\/2023","format":false,"excerpt":"In this episode, our host, Anthony Watts, and weekly panelists, Dr. Sterling Burnett and Linnea Lueken, will delve into the not-so-scientific ways that science gets published (or retracted) that have come to light in the past two weeks.","rel":"","context":"In \"Burning Man\"","block_context":{"text":"Burning Man","link":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?tag=burning-man"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/09\/0Screenshot-2023-09-15-210635.png?fit=976%2C569&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/09\/0Screenshot-2023-09-15-210635.png?fit=976%2C569&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/09\/0Screenshot-2023-09-15-210635.png?fit=976%2C569&ssl=1&resize=525%2C300 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/09\/0Screenshot-2023-09-15-210635.png?fit=976%2C569&ssl=1&resize=700%2C400 2x"},"classes":[]},{"id":286214,"url":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?p=286214","url_meta":{"origin":421927,"position":5},"title":"Mark Lynas \u201899% Consensus\u2019 on Climate Change \u2013 Busted in Peer Review.","author":"uwe.roland.gross","date":"02\/11\/2023","format":false,"excerpt":"Greater than 99% consensus on human caused climate change in the peer-reviewed scientific literature? A study which claims over 99% consensus appears to be unsupported by the evidence, because neutral papers were misclassified, and skeptic papers were ignored. From Watts Up With That? From email:My name is Yonatan Dubi, I\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"99% Consensus\"","block_context":{"text":"99% Consensus","link":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?tag=99-consensus"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/11\/OIG.WHu4q98jGip.jpeg?fit=1024%2C1024&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/11\/OIG.WHu4q98jGip.jpeg?fit=1024%2C1024&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/11\/OIG.WHu4q98jGip.jpeg?fit=1024%2C1024&ssl=1&resize=525%2C300 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/11\/OIG.WHu4q98jGip.jpeg?fit=1024%2C1024&ssl=1&resize=700%2C400 2x"},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/421927","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/121246920"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=421927"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/421927\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":421934,"href":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/421927\/revisions\/421934"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/421932"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=421927"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=421927"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=421927"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}