One thing I noted - and this is a problem I also noted during scientific presentations - is that people are unable to control the very human tendency of trying to push through their own ideas on what is interesting. One of my reviewers once remarked "you should try this" with "this" being something that expanded the width, but not the breadth of my article. As for sharply critical comments on the heart of what I did, I rarely see them. Encouraging that my method is accepted, discouraging that perhaps not even an attempt was made.

Yes, academicians will always try to suggest a solution that someone relates to them, even when it's not particularly relevant to what you're talking about.

Also, that article you linked was very telling about the state of peer review, not because the content was compelling, but because it was allowed to be published.

"Peer review might also be useful for detecting errors or fraud. At the BMJ we did several studies where we inserted major errors into papers that we then sent to many reviewers.3,4 Nobody ever spotted all of the errors. Some reviewers did not spot any, and most reviewers spotted only about a quarter. Peer review sometimes picks up fraud by chance, but generally it is not a reliable method for detecting fraud because it works on trust. A major question, which I will return to, is whether peer review and journals should cease to work on trust."

-That's the problem right there: looking for (scientific) errors should be the core business.

I haven't had any trouble in getting my papers peer reviewed published, but I have heard stories of several process flaws happening that are mentioned in the article.

The peers used are people familiar with the material because they work in the same field. So they are competitors or people that want to promote papers that mention their own work. I had one professor that rejected a paper until it referenced his own and colleagues' work in the field that hadn't been mentioned.

"I had one professor that rejected a paper until it referenced his own and colleagues' work in the field that hadn't been mentioned."
Agreed, although in all honesty, if that is the price to pay for PR, then I'll gladly pay it. Obviously you'd cite the person concerned in a way that is scientifically sound. "An interesting perspective on the related issue of is provided by ..., inspiring ..." etc.. I know this forced citation practice has been severely criticized, but it's my belief that bigger flaws are to be tackled..
" So they are competitors..."
Agreed, even though throwing out the competition is possibly another price I'd be willing to pay, because you can always send your results to another journal. I disapprove, but I think the big fish to catch is simply "error detection." And you could always put a blog online that says "here's my research that was rejected on no sound basis."

Also @Randomizer: what do you research? (I should ask abge as well, it's just that I know what he does :-) )

Nanoelectronic modeling. Although, now that I'm in Industry, I haven't done anything that could even remotely be considered research.

Man, I was going to try to stay away from posting (I am sort of on a Webdip sabbatical since my wife and I quit our jobs and started our graduate school again), but this thread/article was too good/interesting.
I am taking a class now on research designs and methods, and I am also working as an editorial assistant to an editor of one of the top peer-reviewed education journals in the US, so this article was just too interesting for me to stay out of. I am not qualified to review articles, so my job is to find possible candidates to review.

I've read the article and I've highlighted the critical parts and I'm going to ask my editor about them (hopefully in a nice and non-threatening manner although I find it hard nowadays to negotiate with people when I can't offer them a supply center or that they'll lose theirs if no help is forthcoming).

@Zultar - you have to figure out what tue real-world analogy for a supply center is!

Says the guy who lives fifteen minutes away from me but disappeared :)

It's not that easy to find an acceptable supply center in academia since they are almost always grants or published articles or tenure, none of which I can provide, so at best, I can only offer possible supports and convoys, and even then, I don't even know if my own orders will be any good.

My wife and I have not gone anywhere since school started. Here's my weekly schedule:
Monday 9am-8pm: Classes and reading
Tuesday 9am-11pm: Class and reading
Wed 9am-11pm: Research meetings and reading
Thursday 9am-8am: Class, reading, and spending the evening with my wife
Friday 9am-11pm: guess what? reading and writing
And basically the same thing on the weekends if I can get my wife to take my daughter or that we split up sat/sun to take care of her so one of us can work a chunk of time.

As soon as I can get a meaningful chunk of time free, I'm going to find you, 2WL, and we'll make fun of webdippers and the likes. And I've exhibited extreme control of not posting on idiotic threads/comments over the past couple of weeks.

I was published experimental measurements of laser cavities.

I knew a graduate student that used part of his dissertation for a research paper in a class. The class' professor make some small changes and published the material under his own name with no mention of the student. Student was in the process of getting US citizenship and couldn't afford to protest the theft.

I think that the system should require that all of the raw data is made available, perhaps on the internet. I have reviewed a couple of papers where the data literally just didn't add up. I was only able to ascertain this by insisting that I had sight of these.

Has anyone applied for a grant where the review panel members themselves actually received the money? Yes of course they all withdrew from the room when their particular project was discussed. I imagine it must have been a bit like getting on and off a roundabout in a perfect ritualistic sequence. No complaints though, I am sure that their individual applications were much better than ours.

@Random

What did you do with laser cavities?

+1 fulhamish re: raw data available. I am definitely a raw data availability purist.