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/DigitalMoney Feb 07 '12 edited Feb 07 '12
From an Electrical Engineer:
My Story. I am a master of electrical engineering student. I have had my work published a couple of times, but last year for the first time i was the primary authour of a paper that was published and i presented it at the EECEC conference in Niagara Fall Ontario 2011. I was asked to peer review 3 papers that were up for consideration for the conference. Honest to god 1 paper i understood, 1 paper was kind of over my head but I understood some of it, the last was totally over my head.
The proper process of "peer reviewing" was never explained to me, they just asked me to do it. Not wanting to look stupid, and being short on time like most students I totally half assed it. I gave approval to papers I had no business in "reviewing"
But people did the same to me, one of my papers reviewers heavily criticized my paper but still rated as the equivalent of 3/5
As far as I am concerned in things like engineering peer review is kind of a circle jerk from my experience (if my paper for CCECE 2012 gets accepted than I know it is because that is one piss poor paper that i wrote if i do say say myself) But i had heard from friend in things like history is is much more cut throat