”Give me Peer Reviewed papers and I will believe you!”
What is so great about peer review?
Generally, peer review is supposed to guarantee published papers provide accurate information and make sure that the quality of the data presented is appropriate.
The review is usually done by one or more people who have a similar competence as the author.
There exist other forms of peer review than just the above mentioned scholarly peer review. Clinical peer reviews are a thing in the field of health care to ensure a doctor acted in a way that’s expected of them.
Peer reviews can be open, single blind or double blind and several other things. As you’ve probably guessed, the open one is where the identity of the author and the reviewers are known by all participants. A single blind review ensures anonymity of the reviewer which might add more honesty to the review. The double blind review keeps author and reviewers anonymous, eliminating most possible bias.
Of course, this all sounds better than it often is.
Reviewers can be biased or paid, results faked so well that they seem to be correct. A bad paper can be seen as having a higher quality just because it has been peer reviewed.
It’s a costly and slow process. But in many cases, the approval of peers is needed to be granted money for research or a spot in a journal.
And what is the alternative? Cutting out any kind of peer review without a suitable alternative only opens up the door to pseudoscience and faked results.
Read More:
Peer review: a flawed process at the heart of science and journals
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