Adversarial review is the process by which some law, hypothesis, or proposal is reviewed by its author's adversaries.
This is most often applied to the scientific community, where outright criticism is traded among scientists.
It is also often applied to legal structures, such as in having three branches of government (executive, legislative, judicial) which each have certain political power over the others, to create a system of checks and balances.
By being adversarial this form of review naturally requires a marked difference of opinion between the parties involved, or some other form of enmity. This can be useful in that the reviewing party will not be inclined to take any conclusion without solid proof, but can be less useful when the reviewing party take an irrational definition of a "solid" proof, based more on their opposition than the idea's merits.
Famous quotes containing the word review:
“Generally there is no consistent evidence of significant differences in school achievement between children of working and nonworking mothers, but differences that do appear are often related to maternal satisfaction with her chosen role, and the quality of substitute care.”
—Ruth E. Zambrana, U.S. researcher, M. Hurst, and R.L. Hite. “The Working Mother in Contemporary Perspectives: A Review of Literature,” Pediatrics (December 1979)