Can you explain what you mean by peer review? I'm just not sure that I (or most folks reading this thread) understand what the process involves. Can you provide some specific examples of how it improved protocols for the divers you train? How could the peer review process be applied to sport diving? And what advantages do you foresee it would bring to the recreational dive community?
... Bob (Grateful Diver)
Pretty straight forward: a peer is thought to be an "equal" but in practice within science is most often a "better." So it's nothing more than review of one's plans, procedures, methods, results, conclusions, etc. by a "blue-ribbon" panel of accomplished folks who are doing similar work. In a research diving situation this can happen at several levels. All AAUS Institutions have a Diving Control Board. This board is composed of the Diving Safety Officer and typically four of five others, the majority of the board must be active institutional divers, and typically all members are, except perhaps for the institution's Director of Risk Management who is ex-officio. It is chaired by an elected member who is not the DSO. A typical example would be: The D.S.O., the Director of Technical Facilities (in this case a very experienced research diver and a research diving instructor), two faculty members (experienced research divers), one grad student (fairly new research diver), and two research staff members (both research divings, one a member of the training staff). This group is responsible to the Head of Institution for the conduct of all research diving. It meets monthly and standard agenda outline might be:
- Approval of the minutes of the previous meeting.
- Review of all diving activity (programs and individual diver logs) of the previous month.
- Audit of equipment and compressor logs.
- Review of all diver credentials. This may result in restriction of divers who have not made their required depth proficiency dives or advancement of divers who have met experience or "work-up" dive criteria. This is also when newly trained diver's course results are reviewed and a determination as to their status is reached.
- Review of proposals for diving research. This includes emergency plan updates or approval of new research sites.
- Review of proposals for the addition of new equipment items in the approved equipment list.
- Review of proposals for changes in approved techniques.
- Review of proposals for changes in rules, regulations and guidelines.
- Quarterly forward-look for the next four quarters.
- Forward-look for longer term projects.
- New business not yet covered.
- Review and assignment of action items coming out of the meeting.
That's the micro scale. On a macro scale there are multi-institutional problems that get addressed first by becoming topics of conversation and correspondence between the DSO's and that ultimately wind up as a formal report or proceedings from a workshop, usually with a set of succinct operational guielines, (e.g., the AAUS sponsored Workshops on Polar Diving, Dive Computers, Reverse Profile Diving, or the National Science Foundation sponsored workshops on Shipboard Diving Safety or Small-scale, Low Cost Submersibles.)
Let's take an example where this process changed the way in which everyone dives, in all communities, Diving Computers. In the early 1980s, when diving computers first became available, they were considered by most divers and diving authorities to be voodoo. The common wisdom was that they should be avoided at all cost and that if you used them, you were 'gonna die. There were only four significant ones available, the SUUNTO (two models, the ML and USN), the DACOR "Micro-Brain," the Pelagic (USD and Oceanic hockey-sticks) and the ORCA Edge.
We had an eight week blue-water diving cruise coming up. I proposed to the National Science Foundational that it fund the purchase of six ORCA Edge computers for use on that cruise. Our Diving Control Board reviewed and approved the proposal, I sent it off the NSF and it was funded (there's a peer review process there too ... I assume the proposal went to DSOs and scientists from other institutions for comments).
Everyone on our Diving Control Board dove the Edges for several months and approved their trial use on the upcoming cruise with a bunch of considerations and restrictions. These included:
- No-decompression diving only with a requirement that 5 minutes of no-D time be maintained regardless of depth.
- The board required that a tank of pure oxygen be hung at ten feet and any diver that broke the 5 minute rule was required to breathe ten minutes of oxygen before ascending. This was pretty radical stuff for 1983, but tuned out to be unnecessary and was discontinued (with board permission).
- ORCA's recommended ascent rate was to be followed.
- Divers were to work from deep to shallow and "blow off" the last of their tanks around twenty feet.
We later added six "Skinny Dippers" to our Edges and loaned those 12 computers, along with two Oceanics, two U.S. Divers, two Dacors and two SUUNTO MLs (all provide by manufacturers) to research divers and DSOs from many institutions.
During the next five years slow acceptance of dive computers was growing as were our conversations. This culminated in a workshop, chaired by Mike Land and Bill Hamilton were, in a weekend, dive computers were transformed from deadly works of the devil to everyday useful items. The efficacy of this approach can be seen not only from that result, but from the fact that virtually every question I have ever seen on the Scuba Board was anticipated and answered in the
proceedings of that workshop.
In terms of training protocols, the DCB had to approve all courses taught, appoint the staff for all courses and review the details of the exercises used and the way in which the exercises fit together. More specific review was provided by all members of the training staff who, at weekly meeting, discussed what was working best for which student and what might be done better.
Could any of this apply to recreational diving? A lot of it once did, back when NAUI was the dominant agency and the Branch system flourished. Today ... there is no community of instructors bound together by a common task like a yearly Branch ITC, there is no peer review, all there is seems to be bumph from the agency HeadSheads and BS from the LDS owners.
