The Altman article brought up the many issues that are plaguing the peer review system used to decide what research findings are published and which are not. One of the main areas discussed in this article was the medical field. Many of the so called checks and balances that the peer review system has in place are failing to do their job, things such as fraud, plagiarism, and major errors have all slipped through the system. Also many scientific/medical breakthroughs have been rejected by peer reviewers. At the time of this articles publication the AMA was holding meetings to try and find solutions to fix the problems of the peer evaluation system.
Before reading this article I was unaware that the peer evaluation system was so corrupt. I had not previously thought about competition being an issue amongst the peers in an industry. I thought that an advancement found by one person in an industry would be seen as an advancement for the industry as a whole, but apparently not. I think that something needs to be done to improve the state of the current peer review system before even larger issues emerge. One possibility for change mention in the article was an open peer review system. I think that an open peer review system would create more honesty within the peer review system and allow the best research findings to be published.
