younger and wiser?

Peer reviewers get worse as they age, not better. That’s the conclusion drawn by a study discussed in the latest issue of Nature. The study isn’t published yet, and it’s based on analysis of 1,400 reviews in just one biomedical journal (The Annals of Emergency Medicine), but there’s no obvious reason why these findings shouldn’t generalize to other areas of research.From the article:

The most surprising result, however, was how individual reviewers’ scores changed over time: 93% of them went down, which was balanced by fresh young reviewers coming on board and keeping the average score up. The average decline was 0.04 points per year.

That 0.04/year is, I presume, on a scale of 5,  and the quality of reviews was rated by the editors of the journal. This turns the dogma of experience on its head, in that it suggests editors are better off asking more junior academics for reviews (though whether this data actually affects editorial policy remains to be seen). Of course, the key question–and one that unfortunately isn’t answered in the study–is why more senior academics give worse reviews. It’s unlikely that experience makes you a poorer scientist, so the most likely explanation is that that “older reviewers tend to cut corners,” as the article puts it. Anecdotally, I’ve noticed this myself in the dozen or so reviews I’ve completed; my reviews often tend to be relatively long compared to those of the other reviewers, most of whom are presumably more senior. I imagine length of review is (very) loosely used as a proxy for quality of review by editors, since a longer review will generally be more comprehensive. But this probably says more about constraints on reviewers’ time than anything else. I don’t have grants to write and committees to sit on; my job consists largely of writing papers, collecting data, and playing the occasional video game keeping up with the literature.

Aside from time constraints, senior researchers probably also have less riding on a review than junior researchers do. A superficial review from an established researcher is unlikely to affect one’s standing in the field, but as someone with no reputation to speak of, I usually feel a modicum of pressure to do at least a passable job reviewing a paper. Not that reviews make a big difference (they are, after all, anonymous to all but the editors, and occasionally, the authors), but at this point in my career they seem like something of an opportunity, whereas I’m sure twenty or thirty years from now they’ll feel much more like an obligation.

Anyway, that’s all idle speculation. The real highlight of the Nature article is actually this gem:

Others are not so convinced that older reviewers aren’t wiser. “This is a quantitative review, which is fine, but maybe a qualitative study would show something different,” says Paul Hébert, editor of the Canadian Medical Association Journal in Ottawa. A thorough review might score highly on the Annals scale, whereas a less thorough but more insightful review might not, he says. “When you’re young you spend more time on it and write better reports. But I don’t want a young person on a panel when making a multi-million-dollar decision.”

I think the second quote is on the verge of being reasonable (though DrugMonkey disagrees), but the first is, frankly, silly. Qualitative studies can show almost anything you want them to show; I thought that was precisely why we do quantitative studies…

[h/t: DrugMonkey]

One thought on “younger and wiser?”

  1. An interesting paper and I agree with your comments.

    I was talking about peer review over dinner once (I’m very boring) and someone made the point that younger reviewers often give harsh reviews to “make a point”, because they don’t like the methodologies that people in their field use and they think that they can do better. Whereas the old professors are more conservative – they may criticize a particular paper but they’re not going to make a wholesale attack on the whole field. I think this is true – just look at Ed Vul…:)

    Great blog by the way, I have added you to my blogroll.

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