The hottest Peer Review Substack posts right now

And their main takeaways
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Top Education Topics

The one science reform we can all agree on, but we're too cowardly to do

Experimental History • 59806 implied HN points • 03 Mar 26
🔬 Science Peer Review
  1. For-profit scientific publishers extract large sums from publicly funded research by paywalling papers and charging institutions and authors to publish or read work the public already paid for.
  2. Many ‘open access’ rules let publishers just shift costs onto authors through huge article-processing fees, so the profit-skimming continues unless for-profit publishers are cut out entirely.
  3. This is a collective-action problem that only governments and big funders can solve; banning for-profit journals from handling grant-funded work would save money and create room for nonprofit, more honest publishing models.

Science Has a Major Fraud Problem

Common Sense with Bari Weiss • 2323 implied HN points • 10 Mar 26
🔬 Science Peer Review
  1. Fraudulent and manipulated data happen in science, and even high-profile papers and labs can be wrong or dishonest.
  2. Online forums and independent sleuths—including students and journalists—are playing a big role in finding and exposing bad science that institutions missed.
  3. Academic incentives and prestige often protect powerful researchers and can punish those who insist on honest, rigorous work, making it harder to fix the problem.

How Nature Became a 'Prestige' Journal

Asimov Press • 548 implied HN points • 05 Jan 26
🔬 Science Peer Review
  1. Prestige grew from more than merit: wealthy patronage, elite scientific networks, fast weekly publication, and an expanding international audience made the journal influential early on.
  2. Mid-century editorial reforms — faster processing, mandatory peer review, and deliberate selectivity — turned publication into a powerful career signal and a common focal point for researchers across fields.
  3. Today that prestige is contested: digital publishing, preprints, open‑access pushes, and concerns about errors and gatekeeping are forcing reforms like transparent peer review and tougher retraction practices.

Brief Notes on Scientific Critique

Cremieux Recueil • 434 implied HN points • 27 Dec 25
🔬 Science Peer Review
  1. Make sure your criticism is correct: check the data, run the needed analyses, and only accuse or declare problems when you can justify them.
  2. Focus on meaningful, relevant issues that actually change conclusions — don’t list hypotheticals; quantify or demonstrate how a confound or error would affect the results.
  3. Be generous and contextual: assume good faith, ask for clarification or contact authors privately when fixable, and build enough domain knowledge to notice real problems instead of relying on rote one‑liners.

We Must be Doing Something Right

Unsafe Science • 119 implied HN points • 29 Jan 26
🚌 Education Peer Review
  1. AI can be used to spot propaganda disguised as academic scholarship, doing in minutes what can take humans days and making large-scale checks possible.
  2. Some academic work is ideologically driven and can selectively cite or spin evidence, so claims (like widespread hiring bias) sometimes don’t match the actual data.
  3. Exposing propaganda often triggers hostile reactions from its defenders, which can signal the exposure is hitting a nerve, and automating the work with AI would make such critique faster and broader.
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A Reality-Based View of Government Funding of Science

The Good Science Project • 55 implied HN points • 18 Feb 26
🔬 Science Peer Review
  1. There is a tension between official grant rules and everyday practice: policies can require prior approval for scope changes, but in practice researchers often shift aims as discoveries arise and report those changes in annual progress reports.
  2. Peer review at large agencies tends to favor safer, well-supported proposals, yet agencies also run small high-risk, high-reward programs that have worked; the debate is how much of the overall portfolio should be devoted to those bolder bets.
  3. Private funders behave differently from government: venture capital favors short- to medium-term, marketable projects and foundations have narrow scopes and limited funds, so long, uncertain basic research often still relies on government support.

Peer Review 2027

Never Met a Science • 122 implied HN points • 26 Jan 26
🔬 Science Peer Review
  1. Forbidding researchers from using LLMs is unstable and impractical because detection is unreliable and incentives to defect are strong, so allow and encourage AI use for concrete, practical research tasks.
  2. Peer review must be strengthened: shift resources toward human evaluation so people remain responsible for judgement and "taste," with reviewers held to different standards and supported by tools (including LLMs for checks).
  3. Institutional reforms and data are needed to manage higher submission volumes: introduce frictions like submission fees or caps where appropriate and build metascientific data streams to monitor uptake and adapt policies.

Peer Review of Microaggression Scholarship is an Unmitigated Disaster

Unsafe Science • 79 implied HN points • 02 Feb 26
🔬 Science Peer Review
  1. Many microaggression studies rely on correlational, nonexperimental data but still claim causal relationships between racism, microaggressions, and outcomes.
  2. Concluding that microaggressions cause negative health or mental-health impacts from simple correlations is not justified without stronger causal evidence.
  3. Peer review has often failed to catch these methodological flaws, allowing unsupported causal claims to persist in the literature.

Resisting the Politicization of Science

Heterodox STEM • 199 implied HN points • 14 Dec 25
🔬 Science Peer Review
  1. Science must stay independent from politics and ideology, with research, publication, and recognition judged by scientific merit rather than identity or political alignment.
  2. Threats to scientific independence come from multiple directions—both activist pressures within academia and political or governmental interference can undermine research integrity.
  3. Researchers and institutions should defend norms like rigorous peer review, open inquiry, unbiased evaluation, and autonomy in funding and education to preserve science’s reliability and universality.

The Economy of Knowing

The Good Science Project • 167 implied HN points • 23 Dec 25
🔬 Science Peer Review
  1. Metascience needs a clear micro vs. macro distinction: micro focuses on individual scientists’ beliefs, trust, and behaviors, while macro covers institutions, funding, and governance.
  2. Reforms often fail when they operate at only one level because individuals respond to incentives in predictable ways, producing unintended outcomes like gaming rules or self‑censoring risky work.
  3. Fixing science requires a full‑stack approach that designs policies to change both institutional incentives and the everyday experience of researchers, accounting for the feedback loops between the two.

Prove it

Nepetalactone Newsletter • 1945 implied HN points • 30 Jun 23
🔬 Science Peer Review
  1. The importance of independent reproduction in scientific research.
  2. Reproduction being more significant than peer review.
  3. Utilizing blockchain for peer-to-peer review to address replication challenges.

Unsafe Science Retrospective

Unsafe Science • 106 implied HN points • 26 Dec 25
🔬 Science Peer Review
  1. An independent newsletter platform can protect free inquiry and host open discussion with guest contributors. Paid subscriptions can be used to fund research, backstop projects, and launch alternative journals and conferences.
  2. Academic mobs and cancellation campaigns can target critics of diversity initiatives. Careful public documentation and rebuttal can turn attacks into increased support, new scholarship, and career opportunities.
  3. A central theme is that DEI programs and the politicization of scholarship can be ineffective or harmful. If academia remains highly partisan, it risks losing funding, credibility, and the ability to function effectively.

Thoughts on the AI 2027 discourse

DYNOMIGHT INTERNET NEWSLETTER • 828 implied HN points • 23 Jun 25
🕹 Technology Peer Review
  1. The discourse around AI 2027 shows both excitement for its predictions and criticism regarding its methods. This mix of reactions indicates a deep interest and concern about the future of AI.
  2. Peer review in academic work has flaws and can often delay important findings. This can sometimes result in long and complicated processes that may not effectively ensure the accuracy of research.
  3. An open and collaborative approach to discussing and critiquing ideas, like what's happening with AI 2027, could lead to better outcomes. When people engage directly and constructively, it helps improve the ideas being presented.

Should We Care About Replication?

Economic Forces • 6 implied HN points • 19 Feb 26
🔬 Science Peer Review
  1. Replication matters because it helps catch fraud and honest mistakes, but it doesn't have to be literal — redoing analyses with different data, larger samples, or better measures can serve the same purpose.
  2. A fall in published comments doesn't mean debate stopped; many critiques now happen in peer review and long appendices, and academic hierarchies and publication norms also shape what gets publicly challenged.
  3. Frontier empirical work is noisy and many surprising results won't generalize, so basic price theory and simple models are essential for asking better questions, judging results, and prioritizing what to replicate.

Can Anything Good Come from Gaza? How Western Science is Collapsing.

The Seneca Effect • 176 implied HN points • 11 Feb 24
🔬 Science Peer Review
  1. The attempt to improve science by 'free-access publishing' has led to unintended consequences, like the proliferation of mediocre papers.
  2. The concentration of scientific power in a few elite institutions is not enough to drive innovation and creativity, mirroring the limitations faced by the Roman Empire.
  3. The collapse of science, exemplified by issues in scientific publishing, aligns with systemic collapses and may indicate the need for renewal through unconventional sources and unconventional ideas.

The Alimonti Addendum

The Honest Broker Newsletter • 1266 implied HN points • 26 Aug 23
🔬 Science Peer Review
  1. A scientific paper was retracted due to negative press and criticism, not due to substantive issues.
  2. The retraction was driven by a single sentence in the paper, not related to data or analysis.
  3. Peer review process irregularities and external influences impacted the retraction, highlighting issues in scientific publishing.

NIH Staff Revolt Promotes Propaganda about Diversity

Unsafe Science • 91 implied HN points • 11 Jun 25
🔬 Science Peer Review
  1. Some NIH staff signed a declaration to object to Trump administration policies, especially regarding diversity in research funding. They believe these policies hurt scientific progress.
  2. The declaration claims that diverse research teams are essential for better outcomes. However, this claim has faced criticism for lacking strong evidence.
  3. Critics argue that many signatories may not be qualified to comment on social science issues since their expertise is primarily in STEM fields, which could undermine the credibility of their statements.

A Statistical Saga at a "Top" Journal

The Good Science Project • 122 implied HN points • 26 Jan 25
🔬 Science Peer Review
  1. Top scientific journals sometimes have trouble understanding basic statistics. This can lead to confusion and errors that affect research outcomes.
  2. A recent case showed that reviewing a paper could involve contradictory requests, like asking for a post-hoc power analysis, which is generally not helpful after results are already obtained.
  3. Researchers should not rely solely on journal editors for correct statistical advice. The system needs to improve how it addresses statistical issues in published studies.

The peer-review literature says science should not run from public challenges; here's a framework for fair discussions

Steve Kirsch's newsletter • 5 implied HN points • 01 Jan 26
🔬 Science Peer Review
  1. Experts should engage in public, evidence-based debate instead of avoiding challenges. Refusing to debate undermines scientific norms and public trust.
  2. A fair public debate needs a narrow question, balanced credentialed panels with conflict disclosures, a strict evidence-first format, and an independent post-debate audit, with all data and the full record publicly archived. Neutral funding and platform transparency are also required.
  3. Relying only on closed peer review and avoiding open scrutiny weakens credibility. Reforming peer review and embracing transparent, verifiable debates would better hold researchers accountable and inform the public.

Paul Offit responds to multiple challenges by deferring to the peer-reviewed literature

Steve Kirsch's newsletter • 6 implied HN points • 16 Dec 25
🏥 Health Politics Peer Review
  1. Peer review and major journals can act as gatekeepers tied to institutional and industry interests, so relying only on traditional publication as proof can suppress dissenting evidence and block open scientific debate.
  2. A new, simple analysis method applied to comprehensive national registry data is claimed to reveal net harms in some groups, and critics are challenged to either point to a better method or directly engage with those data and code.
  3. Restoring trustworthy science requires concrete reforms — open raw data, transparent and accountable peer review, independent funding for journals, cryptographic records of submissions, and stronger support for replication and independent researchers.

That MIT paper about AI accelerating materials science progress that everyone has been talking about is fake..

More is Different • 32 implied HN points • 29 Jun 25
🔬 Science Peer Review
  1. A paper from MIT claimed AI helps scientists be more productive, but it turned out to be fake. The student behind it has been expelled and the paper withdrawn.
  2. Many respected people praised the fake paper, not realizing it was based on unreliable data. This shows how easily misinformation can spread in academic circles.
  3. The incident highlights the need for a culture where scientists can question research openly. Asking tough questions could help prevent fraud and ensure better scientific practices.

To Paul Offit: An invitation to a public, evidence-bounded discussion

Steve Kirsch's newsletter • 4 implied HN points • 19 Dec 25
🏥 Health Politics Peer Review
  1. A focused public discussion is proposed to answer one narrow question: whether mRNA COVID-19 vaccines showed a clear net mortality benefit based on peer-reviewed studies.
  2. The discussion would be strictly evidence-bounded and structured: 60 minutes, only peer-reviewed papers (each side submits up to three in advance), materials shared 14 days before, equal talk time, and a method-focused review of assumptions and bias.
  3. To encourage participation and transparency, a charitable donation would be offered to the invited expert, the session and referenced materials would be made public, and an alternative expert is acceptable if the invitee declines.

Building the science factory with LLMs

The Counterfactual • 39 implied HN points • 13 Dec 23
🔬 Science Peer Review
  1. Large Language Models (LLMs) could make scientific research faster and more efficient. They might help researchers come up with better hypotheses and analyze data more easily.
  2. Breaking down the research process into smaller parts might allow automation in areas like designing experiments and preparing stimuli. This could save time and improve the quality of research.
  3. While automating parts of scientific research can be helpful, it's important to ensure that human involvement remains, as fully automating the process could lead to lower-quality science.

Can taste beat peer review?

New Things Under the Sun • 160 implied HN points • 24 Apr 23
🔬 Science Peer Review
  1. Scientific peer review has its strengths, but it also has shortcomings like high costs and potential biases.
  2. Empowering individuals to make decisions on resource allocation can sometimes outperform peer review, especially for supporting less conventional or risky research projects.
  3. Studies show that editors can play a significant role in selecting high-impact or novel research papers, showcasing the importance of individual decision-makers in scientific publishing.

What does peer review know?

New Things Under the Sun • 160 implied HN points • 19 Apr 23
🔬 Science Peer Review
  1. Peer review is a common way to allocate scientific resources and has been shown to predict scientific impact.
  2. Studies have found a positive correlation between peer review scores and measures of research impact, such as publications and citations.
  3. The strength of the association between peer review scores and research impact may vary, but overall peer review can provide valuable insights into the potential impact of scientific work.

Scientists Censoring Science

Unsafe Science • 97 implied HN points • 07 Dec 23
🔬 Science Peer Review
  1. Censorship isn't just government-based, but also exists in various forms like corporate agreements and book bans.
  2. Rejection in science for not meeting standards isn't censorship - it's a common part of the scientific process.
  3. There is a rising trend of scientists facing punishment for their speech, leading to self-censorship and threats to academic freedom.

eLife's Suppression of Science

A Biologist's Guide to Life • 51 implied HN points • 23 Feb 24
🔬 Science Peer Review
  1. Peer review in the scientific community can be flawed, biased, and influenced by power dynamics, leading to the suppression of scientific findings.
  2. Scientific papers can face unfair rejection based on personal biases, conflicts of interest, and editorial decisions.
  3. The current scientific publishing system may hinder the open discussion and publication of research that challenges established beliefs or powerful stakeholders in the field.

Science Funders, High-Risk Research, and Apple Pie

The Good Science Project • 33 implied HN points • 18 Jul 23
🔬 Science Peer Review
  1. Science funding agencies struggle to fund truly high-risk projects due to the constraints of peer review processes.
  2. Agency staff may be hesitant to deviate from traditional practices, even if officially given the authority to do so.
  3. Well-intentioned programs for high-risk research can be underused due to organizational norms and resistance to change.

Interview: Jeffrey Marqusee (formerly a DOD research funder)

The Good Science Project • 29 implied HN points • 11 Jul 23
🔬 Science Peer Review
  1. Jeff Marqusee led research programs on environmental and energy issues at the Department of Defense.
  2. His program solicited and funded high-risk research proposals by setting aside specific funding and conducting internal reviews.
  3. An unintended experiment showed the importance of funding high-risk research and the limitations of peer review in making funding decisions.

From Papyrus to Preprints

Reboot • 7 implied HN points • 08 Dec 24
🔬 Science Peer Review
  1. Preprints are changing how research is shared. They allow scientists to share their findings quickly, before formal peer reviews, which helps speed up the conversation in the scientific community.
  2. The traditional peer review process can be slow and has limitations. Sometimes, important discoveries don’t get published because they don't fit the narrow criteria of journals.
  3. Platforms like arXiv have democratized access to research. They let everyone see new ideas and findings, but they also require us to be careful about the quality of information we trust.

Links (1)

Bretton Goods • 31 implied HN points • 12 Feb 23
🔬 Science Peer Review
  1. Understand how neural networks work with an interesting explanation from Olah et. al
  2. Learn about the history of scientific research and patronage from the rich
  3. Gain insights on modern macroeconomics and what it gets wrong

029: How to Read a Science Paper

Harnessing the Power of Nutrients • 19 implied HN points • 11 Mar 17
🚌 Education Peer Review
  1. This episode provides guidance on how to read a science paper effectively, from developing good research questions to analyzing study design.
  2. Utilize resources like PubMed, Google Scholar, MeSH terms, and Sci-Hub to access full texts legally and efficiently.
  3. Understanding the anatomy of a science paper and the importance of critical analysis in interpreting research findings is crucial for beginners and advanced researchers alike.

Science and the Policy Response

Joshua Gans' Newsletter • 0 implied HN points • 13 Jan 21
🔬 Science Peer Review
  1. Science heavily influenced policy-making during the Covid-19 pandemic, tracking the number of cases and playing a significant role in the global response.
  2. Recent research on Covid-19 had a substantial impact on policy-making and was highly cited by both policy-makers and other scientists.
  3. International governmental organizations like the World Health Organization (WHO) played a key role in connecting policy to science, producing more impactful documents compared to national governments or think tanks.