"Who's Afraid of Peer Review"

The magazine Science conducted a fascinating experiment on peer review in open-access journals. They were able to get a bogus paper accepted (often without peer review and even more often without rigorous peer review) more often than not. Interestingly, they did not comment on whether or not they got the IRB approval that is necessary for studies that involve human subjects. (IRB is "Internal Review Board" and is a board for US-based studies. Other countries have analogous bodies.) As discussed in the first link, although this experiment was done with open-access journals, I'm sure one would find the same crap in journals that are published using more conventional pricing models.

(Tip of the cap to someone named Gary King, who appears to be a professor at Harvard University. I found this article via a Facebook link on which my collaborator James Fowler wrote a comment.)