The peer review process provides a minimal level of verification, and the paper provides details that can be directly looked at.

>The peer review process provides a minimal level of verification

But this is only true if you trust the peer more than the author. Because both the author and the peer are not accountable to you or to mostly none.

So "peer review", without any other qualification is as good as shit.

Every time I see people go "BUT IS IT PEER REVIEWED !??" I can't help but chuckle.

> But this is only true if you trust the peer more than the author

Peer review means that EITHER the author or the peer are trustworthy. Not one. Not the other. The failure mode is that BOTH are untrustworthy and not that EITHER is untrustworthy on their own. This is different from no peer review where the author is a single point of failure. There is furthermore the overall system of peer review with some level of checks within it if a peer or author end up being visibly untrustworthy. Not perfect however the same can be said for every single part of human society.

> Every time I see people go "BUT IS IT PEER REVIEWED !??" I can't help but chuckle.

And I sort of chuckle at people like you who don't realize that all of human society if built on the exact same vague fuzzy framework. It's not about absolutes but about levels of trustworthiness and system level checks.

Edit: In this case, for example, the quote is based on a study that the speaker did not publish. The study actually says the exact opposite. So now there's THREE levels of trust that can cross verify. The speaker, the original study authors and the peer reviews. In this case the speaker clearly is not trustworthy as their own source material disagrees with them. Had I simply blindly trusted the speaker this would not have been evident but due to having a study I can verify.

>Peer review means that EITHER the author or the peer are trustworthy.

The point is that trusting two is not better than trusting one when both of them have equal chance to be malicious.

> human society if built on the exact same vague fuzzy framework.

May be, but we can try to call a spade a spade and not pretend that something is more trustworthy than it is.

> have equal chance to be malicious.

Is A has a p chance of being malicious and B has a q chance of being malicious then the chance of them both being malicious is pq. pq <= p and p*q <= q.

I'm honestly not sure why its so hard for you to understand that TWO people being malicious at the same time is less likely than either being mailicous on their own.

This is why "scientists" cannot be trusted. They "thinking" is disconnected from real world dynamics.

> both being malicious is pq.

Not if p -> q. If p is malicious, a malicious q is most probably maliciously picked by p to review this study.