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We Forgot The True Purpose of Peer Review
Shadows on a cave wall don’t tell the whole story
It happens all the time. You scroll through the news and see an attention-grabbing headline about some new discovery — maybe it’s a politician claiming “global cooling” at the UN, or a headline screaming that “Tylenol causes autism in pregnant women.” Tomorrow it’ll be coffee saving your life — or coffee killing you. Your reflex thought probably is: “Wait, is this legit?”
That’s when we ask what’s become our trust filter: “Was this peer-reviewed?” — like asking for ID at the door of credibility. If something hasn’t been peer-reviewed (and those headline-grabbing claims certainly didn’t), we tend to dismiss it — unless you’re the world’s most stubborn denier, in which case even a century of warnings won’t shake you.
It’s a question that has become more than a habit — it’s a lifeline.
In academia, it’s drilled in from day one as the gatekeeper between raw speculation and real science. For journalists, it’s a shield against being accused of peddling junk. Policymakers lean on it to justify decisions that affect millions. For the rest of us, it’s shorthand for trust in a world drowning in unverified information: a cultural signal that something has been vetted by “people who know what they’re doing.”
