>>10996263
The peer review system has benefits and downsides, the benefit is that often a scientist's peers (other scientists working in the same field) have access to similar equipment to them which allows them to replicate experiments and thus test the viability of a hypothesis. It establishes a mechanism by which one of the most important parts of a viable theory can be obtained, that part being replication, if someone else can take your methodology and replicate your results it's much more probable that you're onto something. On the other hand peer review is not immune to creeping corruption or nepotism of a kind, peer reviewers are not obligated to review everything that comes across their desk, they can and regularly do reject material out of hand. As a result controversial or contradicting material can be blacklisted even if it has some scientific merit, all based on the preexisting biases of the human being entrusted with deciding which material to publish and which to discard. Just to use the climate controversy as an example, there is a significant body of climatologists (I think around 200) who have resorted to self publishing studies which they believe provide data contradicting the viability of the anthropogenic climate change conjecture, they self publish because all of their work in that particular subject has been rejected by peer reviewers out of hand in spite of these climatologists having sizable bodies of more mainstream work and being fully accredited in their field. I'm not going to make a value claim on their work, but it seems to me like a clear display of baseless bias. If AGW is a strong and sound proposition than challenges to it's validity shouldn't need to be deliberately pushed out of easy public sight, it aught to be able to stand with it's critics on even ground.