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Peer reviews: in praise of referees

Nature volume 473, page 452 (2011)Cite this article

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Unlike Hidde Ploegh, I am grateful to reviewers who suggest lateral experiments (Nature 472, 391; 2011). Good science depends on reproducible results, and the reviewers are often just calling on authors to replicate their results by different means.

Ploegh is critical of the cost and extra time needed to do more experiments, but what about the cost in wasted time when published results cannot be replicated? In my experience, the lateral experiments are usually better than those the authors planned to do next anyway. They often strengthen the original results and lead to useful discoveries.

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  1. New Jersey Medical School, New Jersey, USA

    Eric L. Altschuler

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  1. Eric L. Altschuler
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Correspondence to Eric L. Altschuler.

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Altschuler, E. Peer reviews: in praise of referees. Nature 473, 452 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1038/473452a

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