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Welcome to the Quillett podcast.

I'm Jonathan Kay.

In 1935, Albert Einstein and a younger colleague named Nathan Rosen

sent a controversial paper on gravitational

waves to physical review. The editor sent the article to a reviewer for comments.

This was part of a process that we now commonly call peer review, but when the editor reported back to Einstein with the reviewer's comments, Einstein was angry.

Quote, we had sent you our manuscript for publication and had not authorized you to show it to specialists before it was printed,

Einstein wrote.

I see no reason to address the, in any case erroneous comments of your anonymous expert.

On the basis of this incident, I prefer to publish the paper elsewhere.

The famous incident helped show that the process we call scientific peer review by which experts in a field evaluate research

before it's published is relatively modern and as the COVID pandemic shows it has its flaws in terms

of both false negatives and false positives.

Much of the most valuable science on COVID-19 is being published without much scientific oversight.

On the other hand, some leading journals have summarily reviewed and published research

...