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Hello,
I'm Dr. Neal Schultz
[pause]
And welcome to DermTV.
In many DermTV episodes, when I talk about different claims
or allegations, whether about medical ingredients, products,
procedures or even devices, in order to stress
the validity and accuracy of my remarks, I’ll often refer to
either research published in a peer-reviewed journal,
or just “peer reviewed.”
Today I‘d like to explain why peer review is so important.
Very simply, a peer reviewed journal is one in which every article
has been peer reviewed, a process that scientific journals use
to ensure that the articles they publish contain scholarly
and accurate information, the best currently available.
When an article is submitted to a peer reviewed journal,
the editors send it to a group of independent scholars,
researchers and experts in the same field as the author,
a group considered to be the author’s “peers.”
They judge the article based on the quality of its scholarship,
accuracy and relevance to the subject,
and also the appropriateness of the article for the journal.
The articles approved by a majority of these peers
are accepted for publication.
Those that are not approved aren’t published.
This is so important because the peer review process ensures
that articles and studies published in peer review journals
contain the highest quality of information available.
So in medicine, peer review is the ultimate standard
of quality control.
This isn’t to say that non peer reviewed publications don’t
contain good information. There are great articles
in excellent publications like Time, Newsweek, Cosmo
and even the New York Times. But these publications
only rely on the judgment of their editors as to whether
an article is up to snuff or not. So while they do provide
interesting and valuable information, you can't necessarily
count on them for solid, scientific scholarship.
So now you know that when I qualify information
as coming from peer reviewed journals, you can be sure
it’s the best scientific information available.
And when something isn’t peer reviewed,
it doesn’t mean it’s incorrect.
It just means you can’t always be sure it is correct.