International weapons treaties work from a motto based on an old Russian proverb: trust but verify. Science works from a related point of view: trust and verify. The “and” is important. As scientists, we tend to concentrate on the verification aspect: we like to double- and triple-check our own findings before making them public. But as a scientific community, we move forward based on trust. We accept that knowledge is communal and cumulative, and we depend on the work of our predecessors and contemporaries.
To a great degree we are obliged to trust others. When we perform peer review—the sine qua non of the scientific enterprise—we trust that the data presented is legitimate and that the study proceeded in the way that the scientists who performed it said it did. Scientific methods are a central part of any published paper—the protocol, the population, the analysis—allowing replication by others. Yet we must admit that when we peer review studies, we concentrate on study design and the authors’ data interpretations and have no easy way to judge the authenticity of findings. Groundbreaking work always requires replication, verification.
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