Social Media Exposes Flaws in Scientific Journals

Many researchers still balk at the idea of social media checks and balances of scientific papers, but post-publication, crowd-sourced social media have been identifying errors missed by peer reviewers and editors.

The most reputable universities and labs enjoy a high level of trust within the scientific community, so papers coming out of those institutions — even when written by junior researchers — often pass the pre-publication reviews process.

But too often, manuscripts contain manipulated images, substantial typographical errors or break journal standards for test subjects, which is what happened when journal editors who published the recent Facebook social contagion study acknowledged that the study did not meet the journal’s requirements for human research subjects.

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