Peering Into Peer Review

The evaluation of quality and excellence in science is difficult.We all recognize a good scientific article when we read it, but it is pretty complicate to express what "quality" precisely is.It must be said that, over a few centuries of the evolution of science as an institutional system, the scientific community has discovered practices, standards, and technologies that can help guide intuition which forms an essential part of evaluation, toward sound, robust, and socially shared criteria.However, it is surprising to note that, despite the dramatic increase in figures of science today, in terms of numbers of articles, journals, research grants, and funding agencies, peer review, which is the essential mechanism of evaluation in science, is poorly understood in scientific terms.That said, unlike Michle Lamont, who is captivated by the social and cultural aspects that mould decisions whenever experts collaborate face to face, I am personally more interested in understanding the social aspects that make it possible for peers to successfully cooperate in evaluating scientific products in an anonymous and decentralised system.Secret rooms where experts evaluate other peers is a social mechanism that humans discovered many centuries ago, e.g., when political leaders decide who to nominate as president of a crucial and prestigious public authority, or when business managers decide who to select for a position upgrade.Peer review, as we know it in science, is not just this: group deliberation.Rather, it is an anonymous, distributed and decentralised mechanism that makes the evaluation of complex sci-