David Frum: Peer review is not a very good system. He says people don't take it terribly seriously because there's little professional gain. People have been mislead misled into trusting something that they shouldn't have trusted, he says. Frum: If the FDA figures out whether you know beef is tainted or safe enough to sell on the market, they just send some guy around to sniff the beef. But most of the tainted beef is not going to smell bad enough for this guy to catch it.
Psychologist Adam Mastroianni says peer review has failed. Papers with major errors make it through the process. The ones without errors often fail to replicate. One approach to improve the process is better incentives. But Mastroianni argues that peer review isn't fixable. It's a failed experiment. Listen as he makes the case to EconTalk host Russ Roberts for a new approach to science and academic research.