"Conclusions: Parachute use did not reduce death or major traumatic injury when jumping from aircraft in the first randomized evaluation of this intervention."
https://www.bmj.com/content/363/bmj.k5094
see the "Peer review" https://www.bmj.com/content/363/bmj.k5094/peer-review
>"While this trial illustrates many important points about participant screening and recruitment in RCTs along with the need for equipoise, we feel it is important to emphasise that this is not intended to undermine the use of RCTs, but to illustrate some of the issues that may arise.
We felt another important message from this paper is that if you make a decision based on abstract alone, this may lead you to an incorrect assumption, so this trial illustrates very well the importance of reading the whole paper."
It is meant to be lighthearted and tongue in cheek - but no less serious of science. It often exists as a form of satirical critique of bad habits of science and science communication.
There are flaws in that model though that have been noted. Prime among them is that nothing clearly identifies an article as from the Christmas issue online, and even if it did that may not carry any meaning for a reader unfamiliar with the journal.
https://www.bmj.com/about-bmj/resources-authors/article-type...
1. Sometimes the latest article on a subject was written 2/5/10 years ago. Depending on quickly the field is moving, that review could be perfectly acceptable, completely obsolete, or anywhere in between.
2. Sometimes the author themselves is just out of date with the field. It's difficult to identify this without deep prior familiarity.
3. Paywalls.
I don't know what the solutions are beyond "making experts accessible for questions" and other public outreach things.
And did I mention my advisors released a drug into the market just recently? Lol.
This is very context dependent so such a broad generalization probably goes too far. It seems like the “soft” sciences have a much bigger replication crises.
But that point aside, your Yale vs. Harvard example doesn’t fix the funding issue I alluded to.
People assume that peer review means a paper is good, which couldn't be farther from the truth. Science journalists aren't any better, they care more about hype than consensus. Honestly, it's dangerous to give a random peer reviewed article to someone who doesn't have broad knowledge of the field.
Maybe we need middle-ground journals that publish review articles at the level of a Scientific American reader?