Peer review is not "the gold standard of modern science." It is the very first step in a long process of communal collection and evaluation of data. Everyone k

Peer review is not "the gold standard of modern science." It is the very first step in a long process of communal collection and evaluation of data. Everyone knows it's badly flawed, but it's better than nothing. It's only when scientific results are reproduced and (more importantly) built-upon that an experiment or finding becomes widely accepted (and thus "true"). The problem comes in when the media pounces on every wild claim in the literature and re-states it as fact before the ink is dry. Actually it's not just the media's fault, a big part of the problem are the press-releases that are becoming a standard part of publishing in high-profile journals. EDIT: An analogy: saying that peer review is the gold standard in science is like saying that releasing open-source software is the gold standard for security. Just because something is open/reviewed doesn't mean it's been deeply vetted.