One doesn't validate the credibility of a journal; one validates the credibility of the methodology in the research.
And it then turns out that most methodology even in reputable journals are rather wanting with many objections that can be leveled against it.
A large amount of scientific research can't even be reproduced, and of much that can, even though the cold data can be reproduced, the conclusions that follow from the data are rather dubious leaps of faith.
It doesn't take much for something to be called “science”; it certainly doesn't take reproducibility, despite various claims to the contrary.
It absolutely makes sense to simply ignore articles based on the credibility of the journal, it's an effective and cheap first filter (and you absolutely need filters) - there are many predatory journals (like this one) which will publish anything that's paid for, they probably even outnumber "real" journals, and it makes all sense to automatically discard them without reading.
There is a lot of noise already in "proper" journals - but in the predatory journals, the signal-to-noise ratio is so extremely low, it's not worth looking into the credibility of the methodology of the paper because that's far more time and effort that the paper deserves. If it was any good, it would have been published in a better venue. If it could pass peer review, it would have been published in a venue that actually does peer review as opposed to these (many) predatory journals who just claim to do so. The authors have strong practical incentives to not publish it there if they can avoid to, and the fact that they chose to do so anyway indicates that no respectable place would publish it.
Because of that, if a paper is published in a place like this, is a completely reasonable prior to presume that overwhelmingly likely the paper is very bad, without even looking at the paper itself.
This is true; it works in one direction, but not in the other.
But how the post which I replied to was worded suggested that one can automatically trust “science”, provided that it be published in a credible journal.
I also find that very often in the most reputable journals is where the most sensational papers end up before any attempt at reproduction has been made simply because the data they measured was far from the null hypothesis, which may entirely be a statistical fluke and not hold up under a reproduction attempt.
It is really quite easy to obtain spectacular data as a fluke.
And it then turns out that most methodology even in reputable journals are rather wanting with many objections that can be leveled against it.
A large amount of scientific research can't even be reproduced, and of much that can, even though the cold data can be reproduced, the conclusions that follow from the data are rather dubious leaps of faith.
It doesn't take much for something to be called “science”; it certainly doesn't take reproducibility, despite various claims to the contrary.