Three quarters of the British public have no idea what peer review is, according to a new poll that was commissioned by the Science Media Centre and Nature.

The poll, conducted by the MORI Social Research Institute, involved interviewing more than a 1,000 adults aged 15 and over. The results were startling or unsurprising, depending on your point of view — only a quarter of those interviewed described peer review as “society's scrutiny of other scientists' work, generally” (BBC Radio 4, Today programme). Intriguingly, however, the survey also showed that the public supports rigorous scrutiny of scientific results before publication, and if peer review did not exist already they would want to create it. “The vast majority (71%) of the public favour either the kind of scrutiny provided by peer review or more stringent controls in which experiments are repeated independently before being published” (The Guardian). Fiona Fox, director of the Science Media Centre, encouraged the scientists to “get out there and share their big secret” of peer review.

These findings are of course timely — they were published only a few days after the “IVF specialist Dr Panos Zavos announced to the press that he had cloned a baby” having “refused to submit his experiment to peer review” (The Guardian). So, the poll's results seem to say that it is not only the scientists who are frustrated with this kind of science reporting, but that the public is weary as well.

There is a constructive outcome to this survey — the Science Media Centre has published a new guide for scientists “in an effort to help them better communicate their work” (The Guardian).