On 8 May 2014 17:42, edward edward@logicmuseum.com wrote:
It is common to cite articles on the assumption that they would not have been published without review and checking. It is unlikely that a published journal article would be a complete hoax (as opposed to containing errors). It was a mistake for the authors to cite a Wikipedia article, of course.
Zee problem is that we know that standard peer review is pretty useless at detecting fraud. Which is understandable. If I claim to have made a chemical and provide a plausible mechanism what are you going to do? Spectra are approach but its easy enough to calculate a spectra and add some noise and a couple of solvent peaks. Sure there are ways to counter that but they are a bit outside the skill set of your standard peer reviewers.
So while it is unlikely that a published journal article would be a complete hoax (outside of the yield section anyway) there is little reason to think that has anything to do with peer review.
You seem to think its straightforward. If you think that you should be
able to propose a study design.
It is straightforward in my field. I have already studied most of the Wikipedia articles in that area, and they all contain glaring errors. Occasionally I clean some of it up, but then the errors quickly appear again.
Please robustly define "glaring". Please also understand if I don't accept you as an impartial source on the matter rendering your subjective judgements of limited value.