Actually, let me refocus this slightly. [Just fixing formatting]
Peer review is a sanity-check for whether what someone wants to publish appears to be credible – whether their protocol, and analysis, actually supports the claim they’re trying to make.
More importantly, peer review is a sanity-check for whether the publication provides enough information for someone else to replicate the work and confirm or refute those claims.
And THAT’S what’s important. Whether the publication was peer-reviewed or not, has he published enough for someone to check his data analysis, and for someone to replicate the experiment and determine whether – even if the data is correct – his procedures reliably produce that data or if it’s just a statistical fluke or caused by some other factor?
If not, then one has to ask why not, and suspect that it’s because he does not, in fact, believe he has anything that will stand up to scrutiny.
Peer review isn’t essential to the scientific process (though it’s a convenient tool that saves everyone from having to wade through a slush pile of badly written reports)… Independent confirmation of results IS part of the scientific process.
In other words: “Put up or shut up, guy. Either it can be reproduced, or it isn’t what you think it is. Heck, don’t YOU want to know whether you’ve really got something or are just kidding yourself?”
