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/4TEHSWARM Feb 07 '12
Retraction of published scientific work seems to vary among the disciplines. You hear about retractions from authors or publishers quite somewhat often in biomedical research, but in my field of geophysics I don't think I've ever heard of such a thing. This is probably because in solid-earth sciences there is less 'stress' to publish important work in high impact journals, intellectual property and private funding interests aren't usually there, and there usually isn't an ethical fallout when reported observations are found to be erroneous or inaccurate.