Some of the men (and they were all men) had been active in the Council of Books in Wartime during the World War II. Then, they had helped to produce the Armed Service Editions that took popular books to the fighting troops, and the Overseas Editions that had taken American books in translation into liberated Europe.

At this meeting, with the Cold War setting in, publishers once again decided to support the U.S. government. The new Franklin Publications would “win hearts and minds” across the globe.

As in World War II, publishers initially thought this could help develop truly global markets for American books while also demonstrating the patriotism of the publishing industry. But the Cold War was a very different kind of war, and publishers quickly found themselves involved in a more complicated situation.

Franklin Publications (later Franklin Book Programs) was funded by money from the U.S. government, and for a number of years it worked closely with the United States Information Agency (USIA) to promote American values through print across the world. Its work involved securing translation rights with American publishers (such as Alfred A. Knopf Inc., Macmillan, D. Van Nostrand, and McGraw-Hill) for particular books, and organizing contracts with publishers and printers in countries where its offices operated to produce them.

Franklin’s publications were sold, rather than distributed free of charge, to ensure that they helped to develop a commercial capitalist book infrastructure of bookshops and distributors. Franklin opened offices around the world, including in Egypt, Iran, Nigeria, Indonesia, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Afghanistan. These offices were run by citizens of the home country, many of whom had studied in the United States or had some other tie there. These offices employed prominent local educators and cultural figures from their countries to help with translation, and in the promotion of Franklin publications. Franklin’s headquarters were in New York, with a small staff who frequently travelled to the field offices to provide advice and monitoring. Back home, they liaised with Washington and the book industry.

Franklin’s effort to promote American books was not purely a Cold War propaganda exercise, although the USIA tended to regard it as such. From the start, Franklin’s dynamic leader, Datus Smith, former director of Princeton University Press, was careful to establish a degree of autonomy for the organization and to ensure that book choices were made by the overseas offices and not dictated by the USIA. But as time went on, Franklin staff (and the publishers and scholars who served as directors on its board) chafed at the control the U.S. government placed on them. Book choice in particular was a source of continuing tension. Franklin sometimes stood up to USIA—and paid the price in reduced funding.

What did Franklin publish? Franklin’s focus reflected both the popular USIA choices of classic American literature, such as Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women, as well as practical texts and nonfiction considered useful for developing nations. Many texts weren’t just straight translations, but also included prefaces by notable intellectuals that explained the book’s relevance.

In some cases, whole sections might be replaced by locally written content. When Franklin decided to produce Arabic and Persian editions of Edward R. Murrow’s popular anthology This I Believe (based on his radio show where famous people discussed their beliefs), some chapters were replaced with those that highlighted the views of prominent Islamic and Middle Eastern figures. The text also helped to assist the United States’ broader vision of promoting Islam and religious faith as a counter to Communist irreligiosity.

Those who worked with Franklin believed in the power of books and reading as a means to create a better world. But they also believed that a more subtle approach to the promotion of American culture—that is, to recognize and respect the cultures of the countries they operated in—was more effective than heavy-handed propaganda. Franklin officers in the field were anxious not to be seen as “Ugly Americans.” They increasingly aimed to show that their work was development work, helping to foster a book industry where previously there was none (or very little of one). Once they had succeeded in this, they would depart. When the Franklin office in Cairo eventually was closed in 1978, Datus Smith reflected that he felt “no sadness about our withdrawal from Cairo. Our objective from the beginning has been the establishment of local capability, and this is the crowning proof of our success.”

But as much as Datus Smith declared that he was in no way an American imperialist or an Ugly American, the realities of operating abroad made such assertions questionable. For example, Franklin’s work came under fire in Egypt from nationalists who saw American culture as a fundamental threat to Arabic culture and the sale of imported books crippling to an Egyptian cultural industry. As one Egyptian journalist wrote: “National thought must be allowed to live and flourish.” In Indonesia, initial public support for a program to help the country reach its educational and literacy goals changed as Indonesian nationalism increased: Under the Sukarno regime, educational and cultural development was to be state-directed and not imposed or aided from without. Like the USIA’s libraries, which were sometimes the target of protests, Franklin books, even if in translation, were regarded as potent symbols of American power.

American (and British) dominance in publishing in the developing world, as well as the Soviet attempt to distribute, free of charge, communist texts, circumscribed the choices of readers. Despite Franklin’s efforts, this publishing imperialism tended to stunt the growth of indigenous publishing in many countries. But imported books did, nevertheless, still play an important role in the lives of the common reader in developing nations. What readers made of books such as Little Women remains a mystery, but textbooks and nonfiction were popular reading choices in developing nations throughout this period. Such books matched the needs of students, professionals, and other aspirational readers who used these texts for practical purposes.

As Franklin distanced itself from the USIA through the 1960s, it sought funding from other sources, including the governments in countries where they operated, American foundations such as Ford and Rockefeller, and other agencies, notably the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID). Franklin’s focus accordingly shifted to building publishing infrastructure, as well as meeting the requests of foreign governments. Notably, Franklin worked closely with the Iranian government and the Tehran office became its most successful operation. Franklin helped Iran establish a printing press with an American loan, secured paper supplies, and helped to produce vast numbers of textbooks for Iranian schools and literacy programs.

The Iran story demonstrates the complications of these kinds of book programs. The close relationship with the Shah’s regime was beneficial insofar as it secured profitable contracts for the books it produced. Franklin had some cooperation with the Shah’s twin sister, Princess Ashraf, in the production of a Persian version of Benjamin Spock’s Baby and Child Care.

But the Iranian regime was not a democracy, and the books it translated ultimately did little to promote democracy, even if they may have helped buttress the uneven modernization efforts of the Shah’s regime (which, arguably, may well have hastened the 1979 revolution). Perhaps even more problematically, working with the Shah’s regime, a violator of political and human rights, undermined the very principles that Franklin purported to stand for—intellectual and political freedom.

Franklin’s real legacy was less with the books it helped to publish and more with its push to develop book infrastructure. The Iranian offset printing plant that Franklin helped to fund appears to still be operating, and Iranian publishers today acknowledge the work the Franklin office did (under the directorship of Homayoun Sanati) in modernizing the Iranian book industry. Franklin had more mixed results elsewhere. In Africa, for example, it was difficult to make any kind of headway as Franklin confronted both British publishers—well entrenched even after independence—and issues such as the multiplicity of African languages that made translation a challenge and the production of sufficient numbers of books unprofitable.

The story of Franklin shows the contradiction that the Cold War posed for the United States: a desire to assert American values abroad, along with the need to compromise those values in a complicated political reality. And although some Americans may have had good intentions in getting involved abroad, those on the receiving end of their philanthropy didn’t always want it (or wanted to fashion such aid in ways that best reflected their own needs and desires).

In the late 1960s, it was revealed that the CIA was covertly funding a range of cultural organizations. The revelation only compounded the increasing skepticism toward cultural efforts abroad. Franklin defended itself by saying it had only received funds from the Asia Foundation (which had indeed been funded by the CIA) and had not knowingly received CIA money.

But the damage was done. Franklin struggled on through the 1970s, but funding dried up. Publishers questioned the business value of Franklin, and lost the patriotic intent that had inspired their support for Franklin early in the Cold War. Contentious leadership at Franklin after Datus Smith’s departure made it even harder for the organization to survive. And, in 1978, Franklin Book Programs (as it was then known) ceased operations.

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The announcement hit every major media organization within hours. But nearly all of the news coverage included the same caveat: The BICEP 2 findings have not yet been peer-reviewed.

Peer review at scholarly journals involves recruiting experts to evaluate a paper before it is approved for publication. When a paper is submitted, the editors send it to two or three reviewers who are considered knowledgeable about the topic. The reviewers and the authors, in theory, do not know each others’ identities. If the reviewers raise objections to the methods or conclusions, the authors must revise the paper before it will be accepted for publication. If the objections are significant, the paper is rejected.

Most observers regard non-peer-reviewed results as, at best, preliminary. Instinctively, this makes sense. When a paper is printed in a scientific journal, it acquires the “imprimatur of scientific authenticity” (to quote the physicist John Ziman) and many observers consider its findings to be established scientific facts. It seems like a good idea to subject a paper to expert scrutiny before granting it that sort of status.

But it turns out that peer review is only the scientific community’s most recent method of providing this scrutiny—and it’s worth asking if science is, in fact, “real” only if it’s been approved by anonymous referees.

A few years ago I began writing a book about the history of Nature, one of the world’s most prestigious scientific publications. I was incredibly surprised to learn that Nature published some papers without peer review up until 1973. In fact, many of the most influential texts in the history of science were never put through the peer review process, including Isaac Newton’s 1687 Principia Mathematica, Albert Einstein’s 1905 paper on relativity, and James Watson and Francis Crick’s 1953 Nature paper on the structure of DNA.

Most existing historical accounts claim that peer review began at the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, founded in 1665. And indeed, Henry Oldenburg, the Royal Society secretary who managed the Transactions, did sometimes solicit opinions on papers that he was considering for publication. It would be far too simplistic to say that peer review emerged fully formed from the 17th century, however. Oldenburg consulting his friends about the occasional Transactions paper is a far cry from our current system, which generally involves anonymity and reports from multiple referees.

The first formalized refereeing procedures emerged at scientific societies in the 18th century. In 1731, the Royal Society of Edinburgh began to distribute submissions “according to the subject matter to those members who are most versed in these matters.” By the 19th century, the Royal Society of London consulted referees on nearly all papers submitted to the Transactions. These referees prepared reports on the papers, but authors generally would not see them—the reports were meant to help the editors decide which submissions to print, not to suggest revisions.

Many widely read specialist journals in the 18th and 19th centuries, however, had no systematic refereeing procedures at all. Commercial scientific journals (such as the Philosophical Magazine and Nature) were often run by dynamic editors who felt qualified to evaluate any contribution. Systematic refereeing was even less common outside the English-speaking scientific world. Academic journals in France and Germany, for example, generally trusted the prominent scientists on their editorial boards to make decisions about which papers to print.

Crucially, journals without refereeing processes were not seen as inferior or less “scientific” than those that used referees. Few scientists thought that two anonymous readers would better judge a paper than, say, the great physicist Max Planck (who was on the editorial board of the prominent German journal Annalen der Physik). Scientists unaccustomed to refereeing did not see it as an obviously superior system. In 1936, Albert Einstein—who was used to people like Planck making decisions about his papers without outside opinions—was incensed when the American journal Physical Review sent his submission to another physicist for evaluation. In a terse note to the editor, Einstein wrote: “I see no reason to address the—in any case erroneous—comments of your anonymous expert. On the basis of this incident I prefer to publish the paper elsewhere.”

It was not until the late 20th century that external refereeing came to be seen as an essential feature of a respectable scientific journal. While historians are still trying to work out the reasons for this change, the new emphasis on peer review (a term that itself originated after World War II) seems to have been partly a response to the increased public scrutiny that came with massive Cold War financial investments in science. Scientists used peer review to explain why the public—and their fellow scientists—should trust their work and feel confident giving money to scientific research.

The explosion in the number of papers being submitted to postwar journals may have provided a secondary motivation. Physical Review, for example, went from publishing 2,310 pages in 1940 to publishing 24,544 pages in 1969. Placing more emphasis on referees may have been a way to lessen the burden on editors.

Peer review’s history is of particular interest now because there is an increasing sense in the scientific community that all is not well with the peer review process. In recent years, high-profile papers have passed peer review only to be heavily criticized after publication (such as the 2011 “arsenic DNA” paper in Science that claimed a particular bacterium could incorporate arsenic into its DNA—a finding most biologists have since rejected). Others have been retracted amid allegations of fraud (consider the now-infamous 1998 Lancet paper claiming a link between vaccines and autism). Many scientists worry that requiring approval from colleagues makes it less likely that new or controversial ideas will be published. Nature’s former editor John Maddox was fond of saying that the groundbreaking 1953 DNA paper would never have made it past modern peer review because it was too speculative. In 2011, Great Britain’s House of Commons commissioned a report on the state of peer review. The report concluded that while peer review “is crucial to the reputation and reliability of scientific research,” many scientists believe the system stifles innovation and that “there is little solid evidence on its efficacy.”

If peer review is indeed broken, as some observers have claimed, an important part of fixing it may be adjusting our expectations of it. It seems a bit ambitious to ask any bureaucratic process to distinguish scientific successes from scientific mistakes with total accuracy. Scientific findings will always be questioned after publication, and some will ultimately be rejected, including ones by excellent scientists. Although there are good reasons to solicit expert feedback on scientific articles before publication, the conversation about whether something is “real science” does not end when an article reaches print.

Hopefully, this is what will happen with the BICEP 2 gravitational waves: The findings will be written up for publication, referees will offer suggestions and criticisms, and the final paper will have survived some lines of hard inquisition. But we should expect—and hope—that debate about whether the findings are reliable and what they mean for our understanding of the universe will continue long after the referees submit their reports.

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