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(1) How is the reviewer of the paper in the journal picked? (2) How hands on was Race with this person?(3) Is there any special requirement of qualification for the reviewer given it is a Novel treatment and unique MoA?
COMMENTS
Great Questions!
1) The journal's editorial team pick reviewers (generally, 3 reviewers). They already have a register of many experts whose role is to review articles as they are submitted (they do this as an academic exercise - as a service to science). Each will have stated their areas of expertise.
2) The authors (eg a RAC scientist and others) of the paper are PERMITTED and may even be encouraged to help pick potential reviewers, some of whom may not be on that journal's register. There is a little box where they are asked to add some names. This helps the journal, since the author is often the one most familiar with who else is knowledgeable enough of the niche subject area (birds of a further).
Reviewers must state their Conflict of Interest. Ethics rule here - favouring someone could ruin not just your own reputation but many others too. A fake will get get published - but then, the world gets to see it (post publication scrutiny) and someone will notice its fake! That paper gets retracted, and the gate keepers (editors) may have to resign, in disgrace. Even the authors of a fake will be in trouble too: Prof Kelso could lose his titles! It's a vicious system where, if you say there are WMD, buried there, you must prove it, otherwise your reputation is on the line.
3) There are no special qualifications. The language of science is universal, so even the mechanism of action must make scientific sense (must be biologically plausible). But what if a described process has never been described? I will try to answer it as Qn 4.
4) New discoveries are made all the time. In those cases, there will be noone available to say its true, or false. Those papers still get published. Since science is about and requires repeatability, the description on this paper should provide instructions that can allow the next person to be able repeat the experiment, and in so doing, to achieve the same results. Once confirmed, that' path which was created or discovered by person X, becomes established as a confirmed road from A to B. That is the reason why we have to get trials underway and get RC220 to market before generics companies are free to copy and make identical drugs, once our patent protection expires.
(20min delay)