Canadian Science Minister Muddles in Peer ReviewJune 13th, 2009
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From ScienceInsider comes this report that the Canadian science minister has taken an extraordinary step of asking the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council to conduct a second peer review of an awarded workshop grant. The topic of the workshop is “Israel/Palestine: Mapping models of statehood and prospects for peace.” This is a topic that can attract controversy, and the issue has been the source of protest when combined with scientific events. The minister’s stated objections are that:
“several individuals and organizations have expressed their grave concerns that some of the speakers have, in the past, made comments that have been seen to be anti-Israeli and anti-Semitic.”
Independent of the accuracy of these claims (the ScienceInsider article notes only two speakers have withdrawn over the issue, and neither are Israeli), there’s plenty wrong with why this would be a valid reason to re-do the peer review. There doesn’t appear to be a claim that the possible bias of these speakers has influenced the work that would be presented (and supported). In other words, no clear indication or suggestion of bad research that was missed by the review process. This was a political request to change scientific procedures for non-scientific reasons.
There’s a lot of qualification over the alleged biases. The claim isn’t that the speakers are anti-Israeli or anti-Semitic. It isn’t even that the minister thinks the speakers have said things that were anti-Israeli or anti-Semitic. It’s that some individuals and/or groups complained to the minister that the speakers said things that could be perceived as anti-Israeli or anti-Semitic. For this the minister asks a research council for a re-do. However, replacing speakers, which would likely solve the kerfuffle, ordinarily does not require a new review. The council is reviewing how this grant was handled to ensure it met their policies and procedures.
The science minister handled this badly. If there are legitimate concerns about the view of individuals at the conference, and an independent review panel felt the workshop was worth supporting, there are other means by which someone in the Canadian government could have taken action. The U.S. is fond of barring entry to people for all sorts of reasons, independent of whether or not they were invited to a conference. If that wasn’t possible, the aggrieved groups are certainly free to protest the event. Political objections ought to be handled by political means. By asking for an additional research review without concerns about the underlying science, the minister injected politics into the process. I am not trying to say that peer review is apolitical, just that the injection of politics here isn’t warranted.