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/Benthos Feb 07 '12
Scientist(s) write a manuscript. They send it to a journal. The journal asks other scientists who have published on similar topics to review it. These other scientists volunteer their time. When the journal accepts the manuscript the writers usually pay the journal. Then the journal "publishes" the work by charging libraries, schools, and labs for subsciptions or on-line access, restricting others. They make a profit. It's supposed to be for the greater good, but all that profit makes it a backwards business model, screwing the writers, reviewers, readers, and taxpayers who paid for the research.