The Healthy Facilities Institute (HFI) has committed to a multi-year strategy to promote peer-review of marketing claims to enable greater transparency and validity in product promotion and to empower purchasers with knowledge.
 
According to Allen Rathey, president of the Healthy Facilities Institute (HFI):  "One of the goals of the Healthy Facilities Institute (HFI) is to promote peer review of claims being made in marketing literature. To that end, we are in touch with print and online science journals to see how we can facilitate this goal for 1) companies that are or who wish to become HFI Benefactors, 2) companies making extraordinary claims, particularly health-related, which to date do not have the benefit of significant peer-reviewed research to support these claims."
 
"We hope to make such well-vetted research available to leading organizations in or affecting the facilities industry such as the Cleaning Industry Research Institute (CIRI), IEHA, IICRC, ISSA, NEHA, NFSI, and others," he noted.
 
HFI is being supported in its position by several credentialed members of its - and its sister organization, The Healthy House Institute's - advisory board.
 
"All reputable scientific papers submitted to either closed or open access journals are subject to anonymous peer review," said Dr. Jay Glasel, Managing Member and Founder of Global Scientific Consulting, LLC and Professor Emeritus in the Department of Microbial, Molecular and Structural Biology at the University of Connecticut Medical/Dental School in Farmington, Connecticut.  "For each paper submitted there are at least two reviewers who either vote to accept the paper for publication, provide suggestions for change before publication, or turn it down. In case of a tie, the editor of the journal will turn to a third reviewer."
 
"Suffice it to say that, at present, the only papers that are taken seriously by scientists are those that appear in peer-reviewed journals. That means that articles or papers that appear in trade journals, and are not peer-reviewed, are not considered as ‘scientific' (at least by professional scientists)," said Glasel.
 
According to Robert W. Powitz, PhD, MPH, RS, DLAAS: Forensic Sanitarian with R.W.Powitz & Associates, PC: "Carl Sagan best captured the essence of the concept when he said: ‘At the heart of science is an essential balance between two seemingly contradictory attitudes - an openness to new ideas, no matter how bizarre or counterintuitive they may be, and the most ruthless skeptical scrutiny of all ideas, old and new. This is how deep truths are winnowed from deep nonsense.'"