Groupthink Is A Flaw in The Scientific Peer Review Process

Groupthink is a well-known flaw in the scientific peer review process. Groupthink is when one group of scientists is trying to persuade the rest of the scientific community that their research is worthy of further testing; this is often done through peer review articles in journals. Groupthink is a problem because it prevents the scientists who are part of the “side” of the argument from communicating their ideas. For instance, many leading scientists believe that global warming is real; but the majority of scientists in the major polluting countries do not believe this.

Groups cannot help each other and must rely on each other. If they had better communicators they would all be way ahead. This is a flaw in the peer review process that has been pointed out time and again by contrarian scientists. It is very difficult to conduct long, complex, scientific experiments because of the inability to communicate effectively with other scientists.

In order for groupthink to occur, there must be a valid reason for such groupthink. Otherwise it would just be a bunch of people talking out of turn about a topic, and no one would care what they had to say. However, most scientists do care, and they use their scientific findings to persuade others to take a different point of view.

Groupthink can cause a loss of credibility for a scientist if it is allowed to continue. For instance, if thousands or millions of scientists believe that global warming is real, and this belief is not based on solid evidence, how can we as a whole trust the scientific peer review process that is used to test these claims? How can we as a society accept scientific findings without question? This is why groupthink is a flaw in the scientific peer review process.

On a related note, how can we trust the peer review process that is used to examine human experiments on animals? If thousands of scientists believe that humans are the cause of cancer, and a large percentage of them are wrong, then we are in big trouble. Personally, I would much rather follow the path of those scientists who have studied the issue and have concluded that it is not the humans who are to blame. The focus should be on whether or not a health risk was created by human exposure to a dangerous chemical in that case. If so, then we need to make sure that the chemical is removed from our environment.

Groupthink is a flaw in the scientific peer review process, but perhaps it is not a flaw after all. What is the lesson here? It is that we cannot trust every single finding that scientists make in their research. We must rely on scientists to be honest with us in terms of their conclusions. If they are incorrect, then we can be sure that the larger problem lies elsewhere. In fact, we must be prepared for worse than just a flawed study, as we now know that many scientists are often very wrong about most of what they find.