Peer review is a process of verification of studies before they are published for the general public. Typically, a group of researchers conduct a study and write their results in the form of an article. That article is submitted to a journal for publication. The editors of the journal send the article to other scientists in the same field. If those scientists feel that the article is of high enough quality and meets good scientific standards they will approve the publication of it. The pros of this method of peer review are allowing other scientists to review the work done by researchers before their work is made public. That way some random joes don’t run an experiment from their home and publish the results of a poorly ran study as conclusive evidence for various topics. It is a verification process in that sense. The cons are that the approval is subjective as it isn’t the same group of people in each field who follow a specific set of standards. The results of a study could seem plausible to some scientists who support that sort of research while others might refute it and find flaws in the methods. Overall, the subjectivity of the scientists doing the review could impact the credibility of the results.
