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Comment by thanatosmin | Hacker News Reader

As a biomedical researcher, I'm confident in calling this sloppy science. There is no quantitation of staining differences across multiple fields (to demonstrate that the images aren't hand picked), no controls with the PCR study (or even showing the results besides one in the supplement), and no demonstration that the antibodies don't bind to amyloid. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, and this wouldn't even motivate me to perform a follow up study.

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I'm curious: how does something this obviously flawed get through peer review for Nature?

(I believe you that this is bad science.)

Edit: I answered my own question here: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_Reports (Summary: It's not Nature; it's a "megajournal" affiliated with it with apparently much lower editorial standards.)

It's hard to say--peer review isn't anything magical. Three experts read a paper and provide a recommendation to the journal editor. Ultimately, it's only the journal editor who decides whether to publish something. Unfortunately, the whole process is confidential, so in most of these cases it's not possible for most people to know what happened.

Exactly. Scientific Reports (and Nature Communications) is sometimes used for papers that don't get into Nature or any of its siblings (Genetics, Methods, Protocols, Biotechnology).

Can confirm. Had a paper rejected by Nature with the suggestion to send it to Scientific Reports instead. Scientific Reports accepted it.

This may be sloppy science, but sometimes discoveries happen in very sloppy and unpredictable ways.

Definitely lots of exciting discoveries happen by accident--possibly most. But understanding what those discoveries actually are requires carefully designed experiments. In the absence of careful controls Occam's razor has to apply.

Excuse me. Science only happens in precise and predictable ways.

Scientific discovery often happens by accident, i.e. unpredictably. And when you're not expecting to discover something, you're obviously not being precise about it.

A concrete example is the accidental discovery of the cosmic microwave background radiation. If you Google "accidental discovery" you'll find hundreds of other examples.

Or, if you prefer an Asimov quote:

"The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not 'Eureka!' but 'That's funny...'"

I think that even the "Eureka!" type of discoveries may be labeled as accidental.

What I can conclude for sure is that the upvoting/downvoting system is very imprecise, but engaging at the same time.

Yeah, just not in the actual history of science. Take the discovery of LSD for one.

I'm not a scientist and defer to your judgement as to the quality of the research method. But if there is even a remote possibility of AD being caused by or someway associated with Fungus infections than I would hope someone does follow up research that is rock solid and not sloppy.

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