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69 Stan. L. Rev. 1 (2017)
Does Peer Review Work? An Experiment of Experimentalism

handle is hein.journals/stflr69 and id is 7 raw text is: ARTICLE Does Peer Review Work? An Experiment of Experimentalism Daniel E. Ho* Abstract. Ensuring the accuracy and consistency of highly decentralized and discretionary decisionmaking is a core challenge for the administrative state. The widely influential school of democratic experimentalism posits that peer review-the direct and deliberative evaluation of work product by peers in the discipline-provides a way forward, but systematic evidence remains limited. This Article provides the first empirical study of the feasibility and effects of peer review as a governance mechanism based on a unique randomized controlled trial conducted with the largest health department in Washington State (Public Health-Seattle and King County). We randomly assigned half of the food safety inspection staff to engage in an intensive peer review process for over four months. Pairs of inspectors jointly visited establishments, separately assessed health code violations, and deliberated about divergences on health code implementation. Our * William Benjamin Scott and Luna M. Scott Professor of Law, Stanford Law School; Address: 559 Nathan Abbott Way, Stanford, CA 94305; Tel: (650) 723-9560; Fax: (650) 725- 0253; E-mail: dho@law.stanford.edu. Thanks to Zoe Ashwood, Adrianna Boghozian, Aubrey Jones, and Sam Sherman for terrific research assistance; to Becky Elias, manager of the Food Program in King County for bold and wise leadership with the intervention; to the supervisors and technical seniors in King and Pierce Counties (particularly Rachel Knight, Katie Lott, Eyob Mazengia, Dan Moran, Jill Trohimovich, Todd Yerkes, and Phil Wyman) for thoughtfully collaborating on the intervention; to Mark Bossart and Brad Costello for help with accessing data; to the inspection staff in both counties for participating in the peer review trial; to participants at the Faculty Workshop at Stanford Law School, the Law and Economics Workshop at the University of Chicago Law School, the Law and Field Experiments group at Yale Law School, the Administrative Law Forum at Berkeley Law School, the Faculty Colloquy at the University of Tulsa College of Law, the statistics seminar at RAND Corporation, the Faculty Enrichment Series at the University of Arizona College of Law, the National Environmental Health Association Annual Educational Conference, and the Conference on Empirical Legal Studies at Duke Law School; and to Joe Graham (Food Safety Program Supervisor in Washington State), Michael Asimow, Ian Ayres, Omri Ben-Shahar, John Braithwaite, Andy Coan, Josh Cohen, Dick Craswell, Mike Dorf, Becky Elias, David Engstrom, Dan Farber, Stephen Galoob, Nadia Hermez, David Hausman, Deborah Hensler, Aubrey Jones, Bob Kagan, Mark Kelman, Rachel Knight, Katie Lott, Rob MacCoun, Anup Malani, David Marcus, Toni Massaro, Bernie Meyler, Jennifer Nou, Anne Joseph O'Connell, Lisa Ouellette, Chuck Sabel, Jane Schacter, Jodi Short, Bill Simon, Jason Solomon, Norm Spaulding, David Studdert, Dane Thorley, Laura Trice, Marty Wells, and Phil Wyman for helpful comments and conversations. No county provided any funding for this research. 1

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