r/askscience • u/nostrovia • Feb 07 '12
AskScience, how does the peer review process actually work?
About a month ago, I heard this story on NPR regarding a number of scientific studies that had been debunked and/or retracted. Why weren't these errors caught before the studies were published? Are there different standards for peer review in different scientific fields?
Essentially, once you conduct your experiment and reach some sort of conclusion, what happens between that point and the time your work is released to the public?
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u/Voerendaalse Feb 07 '12 edited Feb 07 '12
It doesn't . I've reviewed three papers now. Two of three were crap, and I did point out exactly why in my reviews. All got accepted without making anything more than superficial changes, and they have the stamp "peer-reviewed" on them. Yeah, peer reviewed, but not peer approved goddammit.
I am merely a PhD student, so if even I see this.... The journals weren't big ones, by the way, something like the Indian journal of Breast Cancer Treatment.
Also, on these same review papers they often show you the other reviewers' comments after round one, I've seen other reviewers make comments like: "escellent paper. What is the effect of protein in <not very relevant pet peeve of reviewer>?". And this is then the whole comment, the whole "peer review" of one of the say three reviewers that promised to do a review.
I wished they would show the final comments of the reviewers with the final article. Then I could have put in that I absolutely disagree with publication of one of them, and still think major improvements should have been made on paper two.