Peer-review and publication does not guarantee reliable info

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It's interesting how peer review, as an ordinary internal practice in publishing, became politicized by people eager to advance various policy agendas. This routine practice, which no one ever claimed makes papers "true" or "proven," somehow became a stamp of approval (when touted by politicians). "You can't challenge these results — they have been peer reviewed, which means they are true." Nonsense.

My background is in science and I've been a peer reviewer and had papers peer reviewed. It's no different than giving a draft of your paper to the guy down the hall and asking him to look it over and offer suggestions and corrections. Peer review exists mainly because journals traditionally have limited space: there is room for 10 papers in each issue, and they get 20, so the editors have to find some basis for selecting 10 and rejecting 10. They send the MSS out to other specialists for an opinion, and generally follow that opinion. It's a system for journal filtering, not a system for truth-discovery.

Here's another valuable website to follow:

https://retractionwatch.com/

They monitor formal retractions and corrections to published scientific/academic papers, because of errors or in some cases fraud (lots of that coming from China these days).

Oh wow! His eyes open wide!

Yes, this is why I did not bother to try to publish my own work. A big part in my working hiatus.

There is a publishing circle jerk (sorry for the term) going on in academia. It got uncomfortable when autism was introduced. The funding for autism all comes from big agencies trying to identify and cure autism, so there is no money for positive autism research. Because of this, there are almost no autism researchers trying to publish about autism in a positive light. It would threaten the narrative of the people trying to cure it.

Many academics are autistic themselves, but in the closet. Coming out would put them in danger of being bullied by their colleagues, students, put them at risk for losing tenor, power, good projects, etc. They won’t do it. Autistic people in high academic positions would only speak to me anonymously. They would not back me.

And yeah, no one ever checks behind you with your findings. I could have made up everything my subjects said. Changed things if I wanted. I had to fight the “human rights board” at my university because they didn’t think autistics we’re capable of speaking for themselves. Some of this bullsh*t CAME FROM autistic people’s mouths, I can only assume because they were playing along, trying to blend in. Like how the gayest person in the world might say the most homophobic things.

It really turned my stomach, made me think less of humanity.

What amuses me is that the humanities were well aware of that, decades ago. But the "hard" sciences refused sociologists' comments on institutionalized biases. Then the science wars happened, and there's still scientists occasionally publishing joke papers under fake names in humanities journals - to discredit the humanities.
But slowly, the STEM fields are acknowledging that, indeed, the humanities saw this coming.

As a graduate researcher (biological engineering), peer review is certainly not perfect by any means. But when you're operating at the fringes of human understanding there really is no other alternative. No objective criteria exists for new knowledge.

I don't think sensible people claim that peer-review is infallible, but peer-reviewed work is certainly much more reliable than non-reviewed work.