Peer reviewed in name, yes. But the initial publication was rushed through the peer-review process, without a thorough review.
Given the importance of their results, the U.S. editor of the Journal of Electroanalytical Chemistry — and personal contact of Pons — offered to get Pons and Fleischmann’s paper through the review process quickly. By setting tight deadlines for the reviewers and agreeing upon revisions between themselves (instead of sending them back to reviewers for approval as is customary), a process that normally takes months took just nine days. Then, before their work was published — before it could be reviewed by the scientific community as a whole — they held a press conference to announce their results.
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The elements of this story that deviate from scientific norms involve the researchers’ behavior: Bypassing the feedback of the scientific community, ignoring evidence, and not trying to find evidence that contradicts a pet hypothesis are behaviors antithetical to the goals of science.So is it science? This case demonstrates science’s fuzzy borders. The research ended up producing scientific information (even if just about what doesn’t happen in a particular situation), but the investigators’ behavior carried the study away from the solidly scientific.
https://undsci.berkeley.edu/the-science-checklist-applied-cold-fusion/