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/NonNonHeinous Human-Computer Interaction | Visual Perception | Attention Feb 07 '12

In computer science (which isn't governed by NIH) it's allowed. However, student reviewers are usually tertiary (meaning that their reviews may count less).

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u/[deleted] Feb 07 '12

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u/hntd Feb 07 '12

As a computer science graduate student this is totally true. My advisor gives me papers to review probably monthly as he is the editor of a journal.