I have a persistent anti-vaxxer ‘friend’ on Facebook, part of whose evidence base is links to research papers (or their summary/abstract) on PubMed. I gather this is a legitimate site for proper scientists to post research papers, but from what I can tell from the site, one can pretty-much post anything on there. How can I tell if such papers are ‘peer-reviewed’ or in some other way legitimate research?
Yes, it’s legitimate.
Not sure what you mean by “anyone,” the case is true of ALL journal articles, there are many journals who will publish any crap you send them if you pay them. The predatory journals often masquerade as real ones, and some people have published joke papers to show of their poor standards (a recent favorite).
You would look up the journal name and make sure it’s valid. Does it have references beyond its own website?
Usually the top of an article also has “Article Info” section. It gives a timeline of events, a peer reviewed paper will have a bigger gap between times. Absence of this section does not mean it’s not reviewed.
A paper that has not been strictly reviewed is not evidence of a bad paper, of course.
Pubmed is just a search engine for various journals. To find out if a specific article is reputable, you need to see which journal it was published in, and look up whether it was peer-reviewed or not. You should also look up the impact factor of that journal.
Thanks both; I’ll take your comments on board, though won’t put too much research into arguing with a conspiracy fan driven overzealous with cabin fever.