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>The point of peer review isn't primarily about finding fraud, which is rare.

Rare? Scientific misconduct is rampant. It seems like theres a new professor every day being caught out on retraction watch.

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That's like thinking crime is rampant given that every time you look at a tabloid newspaper there's a story about some robbery or murder. You have to do the math and realize that even if every story is true they still are very rare occurrences given the number of people in the community (physical or scientific)

Good point, but scientific papers can have larger ramifications in social policy,funding allocation(billions of tax dollars), even daily public life (food guidelines).

It's also far more important for science to keep its hands clean because fair or not its public relations is important. In our high technological society, we cannot allow people to lose faith in the scientific process, It would be a global disaster.

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