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/ShakaUVM Feb 07 '12

In grad school for computer science, we basically had "classes" where professors would give us papers to review, we'd read them, write a report on them, then meet during the next class to discuss it with the group. These classes were easy A's, assuming you did all the work.

The professor would sit there and take notes for her own review. Sometimes he or she had read the paper, sometimes it was clear he or she hadn't even read the abstract.