Why don't reviewers catch basic errors and blatant fraud? One reason is that they almost never look at the data behind the papers they review, which is exactly where the errors and fraud are most likely to be. In fact,
most journals don't require you to make your data public at all. You're supposed to provide them "on request,"
but most people don't. That's how we've ended up in sitcom-esque situations like
~20% of genetics papers having totally useless data because Excel autocorrected the names of genes into months and years.
(When one editor started asking authors to add their raw data after they submitted a paper to his journal,
half of them declined and retracted their submissions. This suggests, in the editor's words, "a possibility that the raw data did not exist from the beginning.")
The invention of peer review may have even encouraged bad research.
