As we report in our book Trust Us, We're Experts, 'peer review' is a process "in which panels of experts are convened to pass judgement on the work of other researchers. ... In theory, the process of peer review offers protection against scientific errors and bias. In reality, it has proven incapable of filtering out the influence of governmental and corporate funders, whose biases often affect research outcome." Lawrence K. Altman examined the issue in the aftermath of a recent meeting and "the news was grim.

Ragnar Rylander, a respected Swedish scientist, has been doing research on the connections between environmental tobacco smoke and lung disease, research that has been secretly funded by the tobacco company Philip Morris. Rylander has been accused of manipulating his studies to suit tobacco interests, and of thus partaking in a "scientific fraud without precedent."

"The Pentagon has made a decision that threatens to keep the American public and Congress in the dark about how things are going with the Bush administration's high-priority missile defense program," says Philip E. Coyle III, a former U.S. assistant secretary of defense. "Equally disturbing," he adds, is the Pentagon's Missile Defense Agency "new policy of withholding information from the Pentagon's own independent review offices, such as the Director of Operational Test and Evaluation.