Effects of the review process

For the usual incremental process of discovery, a review system assures that papers accepted for publication meet agreeable standards and fit into current beliefs espoused by a given scientific community at a given time. The process encourages orthodoxy and discourages the publication of the unusual or disparate discovery. It tends to perpetuate the “mopping-up” operations which engage most scientists throughout their careers. Normal research results are cumulative and derive their success from the ability of scientists to select problems which can be solved with conceptual and instrumental techniques close to those already in existence. Unanticipated novelty emerges wrong. There is, however, no such thing as research without counter-instances. As a growing sense develops, often restricted to a narrow subdivision of the scientific community, that an existing concept or paradigm has ceased to function adequately, the review process encourages bifurcation and the establishment of new journals.