[Greek0]

Brief summary:

Majorana fermions are particles can potentially be created under stringent laboratory conditions. Whether this has been achieved in practice is unclear: many scientific papers purport to show evidence of Majorana particles, but there are other explanations that could explain to the observed data as well. New research is frequently published that claims Majorana production, but most often doesn't even acknowledge potential problems or alternative explanations. These sloppy practices cast doubt over the whole field, despite the large impact Majorana particles could have for quantum computing applications.

We need:

* More stringent data reporting: raw data, full data (not only the small subset supporting the hypothesis)

* More critical evaluation of other explanations for the observed data

* Transparent publication processes, that prevent a paper that was rejected by one journal on scientific grounds appear in another journal unchanged

[lamontcg]

There was also the problem that analyzing the experimental results are complex to analyze and beyond any one expert. The results need a team to analyze them, and probably a team to properly review the papers.

One thing I'd have HN consider though is that the peer review process was never intended as a sufficiently strong filter to ensure that bad science was never published in the first place.

The point is to get it such that it isn't wasting everyone's time to read it and try to figure out how to attack it and rebut it. The whole broader community of science is supposed to participate in the scientific process, which is what seems to be happening here.

Journals and the peer review process also shouldn't be the sole gatekeeper of the truth either, they do make mistakes in the other direction, rejecting papers incorrectly:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermi%27s_interaction

[kkylin]

> One thing I'd have HN consider though is that the peer review process was never intended as a sufficiently strong filter to ensure that bad science was never published in the first place.

In addition, in most fields of science, refereeing is also not meant to guarantee correctness -- even good research can turn out to be wrong, and conversely some mistakes are very instructive. I think it's generally more accurate to view published journal articles as part of an on-going conversation, rather than as a lasting record of scientific truth [0]. This is not to say that scientists should not do the best they can to ascertain correctness, nor that they should not look for alternate explanations. But one should look at published work as what it is -- the best one can conclude after X years of work (whatever X is).

[0] Unfortunately, it's often hard for outsiders to jump into these conversations, i part because journal papers are almost invariably aimed at others who are already know the context. But that's a discussion for another time.

[trhway]

>peer review process was never intended as a sufficiently strong filter to ensure that bad science was never published in the first place.

peer review is basically an artifact of and a business process solely for the purpose of commercial science publishing, ie. it is a commercial product quality control. Peer review pretty much killed scientific debate as it amplifies the dogma and makes questioning of it nearly impossible. Even during Dark Ages people were challenging dogma more deeply and freely (even though doing so carried the risk of being burnt at stake) than the scientists risk doing today. Back then there were public debates, and today we have anonymous peer review instead - how is that for the progress...

>The point is to get it such that it isn't wasting everyone's time to read it

this is what you have your students for (depending on the complexity of the work - seniors and/or PhD students). Like puppies they need something to work their teeth on :) Finding flaws/errors/etc. is a good training, and it makes the students a real, though minor, participants and partners in doing of the actual current science, and being such a lowly grunts they get to focus on finding real issues/errors, fact checking/etc. instead of higher level opining.

[dataflow]

> Transparent publication processes, that prevent a paper that was rejected by one journal on scientific grounds appear in another journal unchanged

This is great when reviewers are reviewing properly. But when you run into reviewers that literally don't read some parts of the paper and then object to things already addressed there, it starts backfiring. I don't know how to address this, but I'm thinking maybe making reviewer comments public without necessarily requiring a change to publish elsewhere would tackle both issues? It would seem to encourage both high quality reviews and the addressing of those reviews.

[d110af5ccf]

I agree with the sentiment, but I think "branding" a paper that was rejected in any way whatsoever would make things worse on the whole. The ability to try again seems to be an important part of the (admittedly imperfect) peer review process. (Relevant caricature: http://matt.might.net/articles/peer-fortress)

[spicybright]

Maybe we need to start putting brown M&Ms into research papers /s

https://www.insider.com/van-halen-brown-m-ms-contract-2016-9

[nxpnsv]

Thanks, this is truly helpful

[scythmic_waves]

Yeah I would pay money to have one of these at the top of every article I read.