Next time you see the phrase “peer-reviewed journal,” consider the fact that the guy in this video is the top editor of one of the most respected ones.

Yikes.

Hat tip: Asymmetrical Information.

Addendum, 10/15/06: Tim Blair has strong thoughts on the Lancet and peer review: “…the system of peer review is biased, unjust, unaccountable, incomplete, easily fixed, often insulting, usually ignorant, occasionally foolish, and frequently wrong. (Tell us what you really think, Tim!

Also, J.F. Beck (“The Lancet: medical journal or activist rag?”) has a created a list of dubious Lancet achievements during Richard Horton’s tenure. Amusingly, he (she?) notes that Horton has attacked Britain’s Royal Society for not being political enough.

To which, the Royal Society replied, in part, that Horton’s attack was: “a wholly inaccurate and astonishingly ill-informed picture of the Royal Society that will be unrecognizable to anybody who is familiar with the Society’s activities.”

I’ll say. In fact, there are those who would say the Royal Society — in the news lately for trying to tell a U.S. corporation which U.S. think-tanks it should support — is entirely too political. But not political enough for Lancet Editor Richard Horton, I guess.