In 2026, PM reviewers continue to make outstanding contributions to the peer review process. They demonstrated professional effort and enthusiasm in their reviews and provided comments that genuinely help the authors to enhance their work.
Hereby, we would like to highlight some of our outstanding reviewers, with a brief interview of their thoughts and insights as a reviewer. Allow us to express our heartfelt gratitude for their tremendous effort and valuable contributions to the scientific process.
Stuart B. Bauer, Boston Children's Hospital, USA
Haripriya Sathyanarayanan, Stantec, Canada
Stuart B. Bauer
Dr. Stuart Bauer received his medical degree from the University of Rochester School of Medicine in 1968, interned at King County Hospital in Seattle, Washington, completed his residency in Urology at Tufts-New England Medical Center in Boston and had an elective with Mr. Richard Turner Warwick at the Middlesex Hospital in London. He moved to Children’s Hospital Boston in 1977, developing the first urodynamics laboratory entirely devoted to children and was promoted to Professor of Surgery (Urology) at Harvard Medical School in 2000. His research led to breakthroughs in understanding of bladder function in children with neurologic, anatomic, and functional disorders. His findings in newborns with myelodysplasia led to a paradigm shift in how these babies are currently managed worldwide. In addition, he has published 211 articles in peer-reviewed journals, written over 71 chapters in urologic textbooks and edited 2 books on the evaluation and management of children with urologic diseases. He has been a visiting professor at numerous institutions in the United States and worldwide and given lectures at over 150 scientific meetings, locally, nationally and internationally. From 2008 to 2014, he served as President of the International Children’s Continence Society where he worked tirelessly to advance the objectives of this global society, namely improving the care of children with bladder dysfunction. Moreover, he has received a number of awards recognizing his accomplishments: in 2009, he received the Pediatric Urology Progress Medal; in October 2011 he was awarded the Pediatric Urology Medal from the Section on Urology of the American Academy of Pediatrics; in March 2012, he received a Life Time Achievement Medal from the Spina Bifida Association of America; in May 2014, the American Urologic Association presented him with the Victor A. Politano Award; and, on September 11, 2021, the American Urological Association Care Foundation honored him with the John W. Duckett Jr., MD Pediatric Urology Research Excellence Award.
PM: What are the limitations of the existing peer-review system? What can be done to improve it?
Dr. Bauer: When someone is willing to serve as a peer reviewer, they should be asked whether they have any conflicts of interest (COIs) and to describe them, updating their COIs on a yearly basis. This would provide the editors with a clearer picture of whom to invite to review a specific manuscript. Another way to reduce possibly biased reviews even if there is no COI, would be to have reviewers know that their name will be attached to any comments they make during peer review. If someone is not comfortable having their name attached to their review of a manuscript, that person is not providing an honest review. This may be a harsh statement, but I believe it is the right approach. Every time I have reviewed a manuscript, I have felt comfortable having my name attached to that review.
PM: Biases are inevitable in peer review. How do you minimize any potential biases during review?
Dr. Bauer: If a reviewer discloses that he/she has a COI, they should not be asked to peer review that manuscript. Despite being honest about conducting an unbiased peer review, it is impossible to say that a person with a COI was totally honest in formulating their peer review. I think it makes the process ‘cleaner’ if individuals with a COI are not invited to review the manuscript.
PM: Is it important for authors to disclose COI? To what extent would a COI influence research?
Dr. Bauer: Theoretically, it isn’t, if the author looks at his/her honestly. But to eliminate any suspicion of bias in obtaining results, all COIs should be revealed before any research is done at the institution where the research is being conducted.
(by Ziv Zhang, Masaki Lo)
Haripriya Sathyanarayanan
Haripriya Sathyanarayanan is a Senior Researcher in Human-Building Interaction at Stantec. Her work focuses on understanding how the built environments influence human experience, by applying immersive and multimodal methods such as virtual reality (VR), physiological sensing, and observational research. She completed her PhD in Architecture at the University of California, Berkeley, where she investigated pediatric healthcare environments using VR, eye-tracking, and biofeedback. Her current work extends this into real-world settings, including schools, healthcare facilities, and workplaces, with an emphasis on populations often underrepresented in research. Her recent projects involve integrating wearable data, environmental sensing, and user feedback to inform design decisions and evaluate outcomes, with a focus on translating research into practice. Connect with her on LinkedIn.
Dr. Sathyanarayanan thinks that peer review helps maintain the standards for published work. She points out that researchers face pressure to get the work published, and without careful review, methodologically weak studies or unsupported claims could enter the scientific literature and be built upon—peer review catches such issues. She adds that peer review also helps position research appropriately, ensuring authors do not claim more than what the data support. At its best, she emphasizes, peer review is collaborative: it makes papers clearer and helps authors situate their work properly within the existing literature. With AI being increasingly involved in both writing and reviewing, she points out a risk of well-written papers that are methodologically unsound, or reviews that miss fundamental design flaws by focusing on surface-level issues. She stresses that a good review requires domain knowledge and the ability to evaluate whether the methods actually support the claims—something that still relies on human expertise.
Dr. Sathyanarayanan advises that reviewers should be specific, focusing on study design, whether the statistical approach fits the data, and whether the methods actually support the conclusions. A key point, she notes, is distinguishing between fundamental issues and suggestions: some problems invalidate the conclusions, while others are merely alternative approaches or areas for improvement, and authors need clarity on which is which. She identifies overclaims as the main issue to watch for—if the study design cannot answer the claimed question or if the analysis does not support the conclusions, that must be clearly identified. She also emphasizes that reviewers should ensure a clear separation between results and interpretation: results should present observed findings, while interpretation should be in the discussion section and grounded in the literature or study design. Additionally, she highlights the importance of objectivity, stating that reviewers should focus on the work itself rather than personal preferences or how they would have approached the research.
“I enjoy the process. I like working through methods and seeing how different researchers approach study design and analysis, especially in research involving human subjects in which things are rarely straightforward. There is a lot of strong work being done, and as a reviewer you often get to see it early. That is engaging, especially when there is a thoughtful approach to a difficult research question. It is also useful for my own work. You start to see patterns, what kinds of designs create problems later, where statistical choices lead to interpretation issues, and what makes a study holds up under scrutiny. There is also a practical side. If methods and design are not reviewed carefully, weak studies get published and cited. With more automation and AI in the process, that risk increases. Careful review helps maintain rigor in what gets accepted and published,” says Dr. Sathyanarayanan.
(by Lareina Lim, Masaki Lo)
