On Feb 10, 2008, at 12:58 AM, Barry Saunders wrote:
It's also worth noting that doubleblind peer review WORKS. It is one of the few mechanisms available that redresses the gender bias in academic writing.
Your example of how the standard editorial process WORKS is unfortunate. I recall a case involving one of the flagship journals in the communication field in which the reviewers rejected a paper based on the presumed gender of the authors. In any event, the notion that articles undergo double-blind peer review or that this matters is naive. I have reviewed plenty of papers for editors who told me who the paper's author was or failed to take the author's name off the paper. In addition, blind review hardly matters given that editors can and do send papers to particular reviewers knowing how those reviewers will react to the paper. Care to provide another proof that the current system WORKS?