Open Peer Commentary

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 by 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.

A current example of this process is the creation-evolution controversy, it is also the classic system of policy review in the political system of the UK, and some other democratic nations.