[lbeltrame]

> I would see acceptance into a top-tier journal - or even a reputable journal - as a very, very strong signal.

Not anymore, I'd say. Both The New England Journal of Medicine and Lancet were fooled by the Surgisphere scandal, and they didn't even notice the statistical errors, let alone the fabrication of the data.

Lancet took years to remove the Wakefield paper on autism and vaccines, and still has other papers with questionable statistics up.

What I consider a strong signal is good data with clear conclusions and well-outlined limitations (these are often as important as the results themselves). Peer review can help with that, but it's not a magic bullet. In that sense top tier journals can be "dangerous" because sometimes they focus on good storytelling instead of presenting the data correctly.