I'm surprised that there are still non double blind publications that count for tenure cases.
This does explain some of the recent and embarrassing [lack of] retractions of Nature papers though.
This does explain some of the recent and embarrassing [lack of] retractions of Nature papers though.
Reviewers are generally overworked (for other reasons), and the main goal is to be constructive and somehow not sound like an idiot (in front of the other reviewers, who might be subject experts and definitely know who you are!) in any of the pile of reviews you need to write after reading a pile of papers.
Also, reviewers declare conflicts ahead of paper assignments, which makes accidents less frequent.
In any case, this is the tip of the iceberg. The entire structure surrounding academic publication is absolutely ill-designed and few people in that world are even remotely interesting in safeguarding veracity.
The overwhelming majority of peer reviewed scientific results is infotainment for other scientists with no party having any material stake in the veracity of it, which is almost no one bothers to replicate because accuracy is irrelevant so long it be interesting to read.
The moment a company has bet a sizable stake on it's accuracy, then they suddenly check, and double check and have another party independently verify it because they do not want to loose money, obviously. But most science is nothing like that.
Authors regularly cite work by themselves or their team, so a statement like “In a previous study[1] we established a relationship between X and Y” renders double blind pointless.