Re:peer review is more than that (Score 1)

Actually, the editor of Science has said that as a co-author of a paper you do stake your reputation on your publications. Not that they are the final word on understanding something, but that what you said is honest. That is what science and scientific publications are about: stating what you have done, and what you interpret it to mean. That doesn't mean your interpretation will hold the test of time, but it does mean that you have been completely honest about what you did, and your explanations, even if they prove to be incomplete or incorrect. That is where Hwang Woo-suk went wrong: he lied about what he did. But he was apparently "smart" enough to do it elaborately and consistently enough that it could slip by peer review. Peer review does not consider that what you say "may be incorrect" in the sense that it can automatically detect you lying about what you did, but it does accept that what you say about it may not be the final explanation. Scientific publication does not, however, generally work on the assumption that it is a series of experiments to be tested. Rather, the experiments are assumed to be correct, and the testing that goes on is not so much of a check as it is people's efforts to build upon what you did. This is because scientists are assumed to be honest about what they did (in this case the scientists were not), and so these follow-up experiments are not really beta-testing, they are instead done by people who want to extend the published work, and to push it farther, rather than to beat it to death (although this often happens, it is not the driving force). They are not testing what you did as much as your explanation and interpretation of the data, as well as trying to push it farther.