[DrScientist]

> How is that correction mechanism supposed to work though? Do you mean the peer review process?

No. I meant somebody else publishes the opposite.

One of the things you learn if you are a world expert in a tiny area ( PhD student ) is that half the papers published in your area are wrong/misleading in someway ( not necessarily knowingly - just they might not know some niche problem with the experimental technique they used ).

I agree peer review is far from perfect, and there is problem in that a paper being wrong is still a paper in your publication stats, but in the end you'd hope the truth will out.

People got all excited about cold fusion - then cold reality set in - I don't think the initial excitement about it was a bad thing - sometimes it takes other people to help you understand how you've fooled yourself.

[AshamedCaptain]

I expressed the same idea here not too long - the value of any one individual paper is exactly 0.0 - and was downvoted by it, but I believe this is almost the second thing that you learn after you publish, and what seems to confuse the "masses" the most.

You (as a mortal, human being) are not going to be able to extract any knowledge whatsoever from an academic article. They are _only_ of value for (a) the authors, (b) people/entities who have the means to reproduce/validate/disprove the results.

The system fails when people who can't really verify use the results presented. Which happens frequently... (e.g. the news)