"Reviewing peer review"

The 4 July 08 issue of Science has an editorial titled "Reviewing Peer Review."

There is text within: "Most of those [papers] rejected by Science go on to be considered at other journals, where the rejection rates have also increased. Before finding a proper venue, a paper may have received four, six, or even eight reviews."

321 Science 15

See also:

http://ipbiz.blogspot.com/2008/03/march-14-issue-of-science-mentions-tae.html [Of the value of peer review [of the fraudulent paper by Tae Kook Kim], Katrina Kelner, Science's deputy editor for biological sciences reported: "Reviewers were very enthusiastic."]

http://ipbiz.blogspot.com/2008/02/plagiarized-proteomics-paper-pulled.html [“Clearly human error has caused a misstep in the normally rigorous peer review that is standard practice for Proteomics and should prevent such issues arising.” ]

http://ipbiz.blogspot.com/2006/05/more-on-peer-review-of-patents.html [And, if you want to go further back than Hwang-gate, the 2005 Nobel, and Jan-Hendrik Schon, check out how the Royal Society "reviewed" the papers of Benjamin Franklin back in 1750.]

Also from Science, a beta version of "Handbook of Mathematical Functoins" [first five chapters] will be available at dlmf.nist.gov

Page 21 notes that the 2008 Lemelson MIT prize went to Joseph DeSimone of UNC.

Page 24 asks "Where have all Thoreau's flowers gone?" 20% of species mentioned by Thoreau have gone.

Page 27 mentions work of Zhenan Bao which incorporates carbon nanotubes, metal tubes, and semiconductor tubes to create small transistors. See also page 101 for work by Melburne C. LeMieux.