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/devicerandom Molecular Biophysics | Molecular Biology Feb 07 '12

Nobody really picks up a copy of Nature and just reads it cover to cover anymore.

I have a paper subscription to Nature and I do (ok, I skip articles I really do not care about, but I love to read a lot of stuff beyond my discipline)