What’s Wrong With Peer Review?

The latest in a series of high-profile retractions of research papers has people asking: What’s wrong with peer review?

Scientific and medical journals use the peer-review process to decide which studies are worthy of publication. But a string of questionable or allegedly fabricated research has made it into print. The problems were exposed only when outside researchers scrutinized the work and performed a job that many believe is the responsibility of the journals: They checked the data.