> Nature is perhaps the most prestigious and respected academic journal in existence...
Maybe the first, certainly not the second.
There's an unfortunate correlation between sloppy science and popular journals that's been shown again and again. Nature is one of the journals with the highest rates of retractions[1]. Thinking "it's been published in Nature, it must be good science" is certainly not reasonable in any way.
>"Nature is perhaps the most prestigious and respected academic journal in existence..."
What does that have to do with the quality of this paper?
>'And it's sort of mean to say that my naive response to this SENS stuff is "slowing down actual progress."'
Sorry for that, it is not really your fault, rather the fault of those involved in the publication of this paper. But don't shoot the messenger, it is also not my fault this study was apparently poorly peer reviewed yet got a bunch of press coverage. I just wish people were doing their jobs and acting with proper skepticism because I want medical research to be successful.
"Nature is perhaps the most prestigious and respected academic journal in existence" implies that this paper was vetted by what is likely the best peer reviewing process that exists on the entirety of Earth. Which is relevant.
>"Nature is perhaps the most prestigious and respected academic journal in existence" implies that this paper was vetted by what is likely the best peer reviewing process that exists on the entirety of Earth.
It would be nice if this were true and we could have a easy to use heuristic. But, as pointed out by others, the evidence seems to point to either no, or even an inverse, relationship between journal prestige/respect and the quality of peer review and journal articles.
Maybe the first, certainly not the second.
There's an unfortunate correlation between sloppy science and popular journals that's been shown again and again. Nature is one of the journals with the highest rates of retractions[1]. Thinking "it's been published in Nature, it must be good science" is certainly not reasonable in any way.
[1] http://iai.asm.org/content/79/10/3855/F1.expansion.html