Re:Moderna Covid vaccine candidate almost 95% effective, tri...
by disgruntledphd2 on Monday November 16, 2020 @12:27PM
(#25114378)
>especially one in as prestigious a journal as the Lancet
While I agree in principle, the Lancet aren't immune to crummy papers (indeed, no-one is). Even just this year, they published that super-dodgy Surgisphere paper that turned out to be completely irreproducible (to put it kindly).
Scientific papers are written by people, and the peers of people who (for example) don't really understand statistics are likely to also not understand statistics, so while peer review is definitely helpful, one should always read scientific papers sceptically.
That being said, low-effort dismissals based on anecdotes are much, much worse than the average scientific paper.
While I agree in principle, the Lancet aren't immune to crummy papers (indeed, no-one is). Even just this year, they published that super-dodgy Surgisphere paper that turned out to be completely irreproducible (to put it kindly).
Scientific papers are written by people, and the peers of people who (for example) don't really understand statistics are likely to also not understand statistics, so while peer review is definitely helpful, one should always read scientific papers sceptically.
That being said, low-effort dismissals based on anecdotes are much, much worse than the average scientific paper.