Serious doubt about peer reviewed studies is increasing

See, for example, “Science has taken a turn towards darkness” (This, by the way, is from distinguished medical journal Lancet, not from “A-Crock-a-Lypse News and Used Car Sales.”)

Now, this from Times Higher:

I used to be the editor of the BMJ, and we conducted our own research into peer review. In one study we inserted eight errors into a 600 word paper and sent it 300 reviewers. None of them spotted more than five errors, and a fifth didn’t detect any. The median number spotted was two. These studies have been repeated many times with the same result. Other studies have shown that if reviewers are asked whether a study should be published there is little more agreement than would be expected by chance.

Peer review is anti-innovatory because it is a process that depends on approval by exponents of the current orthodoxy. Bruce Glick, Hans Krebs and the team of Solomon Berson and Rosalyn Yalow all had hugely important work – including Nobel prizewinning research – rejected by journals. More.

Maybe we should start with how we know something is correct.

Hat tip: Stephanie West Allen at Brains on Purpose