Here's your periodic reminder that peer review isn't intellectual magic.

It's 1 editor and 1 colleague reading your paper and checking for:

relevance
clear objectives
good methodology
properly reported results
coherent discussion
references to relevant papers
readability
Peer review is a quality filter, not an arbiter of truth. You could perform a brilliant experiment with ground-breaking results, but if you write a bad paper, it will be rejected. You could also fake an experiment, make up results, write a brilliant paper, and get it published.
I'm not implying either happens a lot, though it does happen. The point is, just because a result appears in a peer-reviewed journal, that doesn't mean it's sprinkled with the magic fairy dust of "truth." It means it's a well-written paper that the editor thinks is relevant.
Even if we assumed that fraud or mistakes never happen (which is false), peer review doesn't guarantee that a model or a result is good. Think about it. If that WERE the case, nothing in science would ever be overturned, which is clearly not the case.

End of PSA.
You can follow @sarahsalviander.
Tip: mention @twtextapp on a Twitter thread with the keyword “unroll” to get a link to it.

Latest Threads Unrolled: