> But even if peer review is ancient, "peer review" itself is quite new.
Google charts about the history of usage of a particular grouping of terms is not definitive evidence about the history of the underlying activity named by that phrase. Peer review is indeed ancient and fundamental to science and scientific progress. It just may not have been talked about as broadly or referred to under different names before then. It's hard to draw more than linguistic trivia out of that. It's especially bad to make policy suggestions based on that.
> But even if peer review is ancient, "peer review" itself is quite new.
Google charts about the history of usage of a particular grouping of terms is not definitive evidence about the history of the underlying activity named by that phrase. Peer review is indeed ancient and fundamental to science and scientific progress. It just may not have been talked about as broadly or referred to under different names before then. It's hard to draw more than linguistic trivia out of that. It's especially bad to make policy suggestions based on that.