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Hacker News is "peer reviewed", but that doesn't mean every top voted story is correct. I worked in a major lab in this exact area (high temperature supercondu
by nirvana 14y ago
Hacker News is "peer reviewed", but that doesn't mean every top voted story is correct.
I worked in a major lab in this exact area (high temperature superconductivity) and had papers published in much more prestigious journals, and getting published was often a question of politics more than science- if your results undermine a theory that one of your "peers" built his career on, you may not be getting published in that journal, no matter how scientifically correct.
And back in those days things were a lot less political than they are now.
Don't presume that "peer review" means anything. It really doesn't. It doesn't mean the peers have reproduced the results, and it doesn't mean the peers are even up to speed specifically enough to be able to authoritatively say the results are correct.
It is about as equivalent as the fact-checkers at the New York Times, and you know how often they print retractions. At the time, quality was slipping too and it was getting more political.
I'm skeptical about this claim, but it has been awhile since I worked in that area, so I won't say either way.
But don't take "peer review" as meaning anything significant.
It's like saying Obama is telling the truth because democratic "truth squads" blessed his opinion.
- sp332 14y agoDon't presume that "peer review" means anything. It really doesn't. It doesn't mean the peers have reproduced the results, and it doesn't mean the peers are even up to speed specifically enough to be able to authoritatively say the results are correct. I know what peer review means, and I know that it's none of those things. But getting a paper published in a peer-reviewed journal means you passed a sniff test, which is better than being written up in your Alma Mater's pop-news magazine.
- chmike 14y agoGreat to hear someone else sharing the idea recognizing that our scientific publication system (aka blessing) is as broken as the patent system.