Ask for Evidence infographic
If you’re not sure about something you’ve read or seen, follow these simple steps to #AskforEvidence? [...]
No matter how exciting or compelling a new piece of scientific or medical research is, you should always ask: Is it peer reviewed? And if not, why not?
Journals have a system for assessing the quality of research before it is published. This system is called peer review.
Peer review means that other scientific experts working in the same field have been sent a research paper before publication and checked it for validity, significance and originality.
If a scientific paper is published in a journal that’s a good sign it has been approved by other experts. Note, not all journals are peer reviewed – you can check usually check on their website.
Some of the headlines about new scientific discoveries or breakthroughs you read or hear about have not been published in a peer-reviewed journal. They may be initial findings reported at conferences, for example, or based on one scientist's opinion.
Read I Don't Know What to Believe to learn more about peer review. Peer review isn’t perfect, but asking ‘is it peer reviewed?’ helps filter out the obviously bogus.
Increasingly, as more scientists communicate on social media and write blogs about their work, there’s a phenomenon called post-publication peer review. That’s a term to describe the (usually informal) discussion that experts in any given area of research will have about newly published research in that area. So to get a sense of how a particular study was received by the wider scientific community, it’s worth searching for blogs or mentions from other scientists about it.
If you’re not sure about something you’ve read or seen, follow these simple steps to #AskforEvidence? [...]
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There is a system used by scientists to decide which research results should be published in a scientific journal. This system, called peer review, subjects scientific research papers to independent [...]
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