What is PubPeer capable of?

Many scientific studies are flawed. Often, the reason is poor methodology. Sometimes, it is outright fraud. The conventional means of correction — a letter to the journal concerned — can take months. But there is now an alternative. PubPeer is a website that lets people comment anonymously on research papers and so, in theory, helps purge the scientific literature of erroneous findings more speedily.

This year congressional Republicans seem to have decided they have had too much of a good thing and have moved to decrease NASA’s Earth science budget. In June the House of Representatives passed a budget of $ 18. 5 billion but reshuffled where the money was to be spent. It slashed Earth science funding by $ 260 million and added extra money for planetary science that the agency did not ask for.