Peer Review: A Necessary But Not Sufficient Condition

This is a link to an interesting post on the Real Climate blog about how peer-review aims to weed out poor science, whether it is successful at that goal. The examples given are from the field of climate research, and provide a telling account of how accuracy can be lost, advertently or inadvertently, in the glare of publicity. The post concludes: "even when it initially breaks down, the process of peer-review does usually work in the end. But sometimes it can take a while. Observers would thus be well advised to be extremely skeptical of any claims in the media or elsewhere of some new “bombshell” or “revolution” that has not yet been fully vetted by the scientific community."