Abstract
Scientists, public servants, and patient advocates alike increasingly question the validity of published scientific results, endangering the public’s acceptance of science. Here, I argue that emerging flaws in the integrity of the peer review system are largely responsible. Distortions in peer review are driven by economic forces and enabled by a lack of accountability of journals, editors, and authors. One approach to restoring trust in the validity of published results may be to establish basic rules that render peer review more transparent, such as publishing the reviews (a practice already embraced by some journals) and monitoring not only the track records of authors but also of editors and journals.
Copyright
© 2016 Thomas C. Südhof. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.