Peer Review Might Mean Actually Reviewing the Data

In response to the stem-cell research hoax earlier this year, Science had an independent review board investigate how scientific frauds had been published and make recommendations on preventing future perpetrations. An eye-catching idea:

Identify “high-risk” papers — such as studies of intense public interest or that may affect political policies — for special scrutiny. That might include demanding original data to back up a paper’s conclusions, or interviewing co-authors about their role in the research.

It seems that if at least this one step had been implemented at Nature, the hockey-stick model of global warming, which formed the rationale behind the Kyoto Protocol, would never have made it past review, and would not have taken over a decade to disprove, because Mann did not want to expose his datasets to scrutiny.