Peer review

From Vox: Rajendran notes that Alexander Fleming’s simple observation that penicillin mold seemed to kill off bacteria in his petri dish could never be published today, even though it led to the discovery of lifesaving antibiotics. That’s because today’s journals want lots of data and positive results that fit into an overarching narrative (what Rajendran calls “storytelling”) before they’ll publish a given study. “You would have to solve the structure of penicillin or find the mechanism of action,” he added. But research is complex, and scientific findings may not fit into a neat story — at least not right away. So Rajendran and the staff at Matters hope scientists will be able to share insights in this journal that they Read More ›

So one does not know where information is published, only whether it seems useful? And, above all, whether it survived attempts at replication? It’s good to see so many thinkers putting their heads together about the scandal of peer review. From Nature, Scientists debate the merits of deleting journal names from their publication lists. One UCal biologist, Michael Eisen, has removed the names for his lab’s Web site. Eisen’s move is part of a broader push to assess papers on their own merits. “We have become far too reliant on journal names as a means to evaluate science and scientists,” Eisen said in an interview. After writing about this issue for so long, he “felt it was important to demonstrate Read More ›

Recently, we were discussing “Is peer review a ‘sacred cow’? Ready “to be slaughtered”? View from UD News: Yes, of course it is a sacred cow. It is worshipped, and someone is benefitting from fronting the religion. Of course, when slaughtering a sacred cow it is always advisable to decide what to do next… Besides, if we thought the sacred cow was bad,what if we get to meet the sacred rattlesnake or the sacred cockroaches? There’s a lesson in that somewhere, but meanwhile … From Times Higher, we now hear of the dark side of authorship, abuse by senior authors: Too many senior scholars abuse their power when it comes to assigning credit, argues Bruce Macfarlane … My research also Read More ›

Possibly due to volume, they are not listed in any particular order. Here’s one: Here: We saw another fall from grace for a paper that was a media darling upon publication. An August paper that suggested feeling blue might affect how you see blues (and yellows) was pulled a couple of months later, after Christopher Thorstenson and his colleagues realized they’d omitted a key statistical test. And once they added it, their findings fell apart. Sure, it would have been nice to get it right the first time, but we gave these scientists kudos for explaining what happened in a transparent way and acting promptly to correct the record.More. Actually, the situation may be getting better, in a goofy sort Read More ›

Ready “to be slaughtered”? Asks David Gorski at Science-based Medicine: It seems to me that, at the very minimum, the era of asking scientists for suggestions for peer reviewers for their own manuscripts must end. The reasons why many (but by no means all) journals have done so for so many years are quite understandable but no longer defensible in the wake of these damaging and large scale incidents of self-peer review fraud. This practice must stop, even at the price of more work for already harried editors. One technological solution that might help would be a database of peer reviewers, each with his or her relevant field of expertise listed, as well as collaborators and those with whom they’ve Read More ›

Probably. A friend writes to mention a report on a study claiming to show that when an elite scientist dies in an academic subfield, new ideas and innovations follow: Here’s the pattern: After the unexpected death of a rock-star scientist, their frequent collaborators — the junior researchers who authored papers with them — suddenly see a drop in publication. At the same time, there is a marked increase in published work by other newcomers to the field Graph offered. All this suggest there’s a “goliath’s shadow” effect. People are either prevented from or afraid of challenging a leading thinker in a field. That or scientific subfields are like grown-up versions of high school cafeteria tables. New people just can’t sit there until the Read More ›

Here’s No. 3: A surprising number of psychology studies can’t be reproduced A huge, collaborative research project attempted to recreate 100 studies that were recently published in major psychology journals, and it found that only 39 of those studies’ results could be replicated. That could mean that the studies were wrong in the first place, but researchers say that the findings tell more about the difficulty of designing a reproducible study than the accuracy of the studies themselves. Studies need to be reproducible so that scientists can confirm their effects. That’s why scientists have generally pushed toward reproducing studies — and not just in psychology. In part, that’s to catch scientific fraud, but it’s also simply to make scientific findings Read More ›

From Northwestern prof Laurie Zoloth at Cosmos: Independently verifying research can help science regain its credibility Wow. There’s hope. Zoloth is willing to talk in terms of regaining “credibility.” In short, all those frustrated people are not the “enemies of science.” Loss of credibility is an objective problem resulting from recent events: Even in physics, reports of the discovery of gravitational waves in March 2014 were later dismissed. Drug companies conducting clinical trials neglect to publish the entire data set, potentially hiding unfavourable results. But drug companies are also victims. In 2011, drug company Bayer reported it could replicate only 25% of published findings related to drug targets for cancer, women’s health and cardiovascular medicine. In 2012 the company Amgen Read More ›

From a Top Rated journal TM: ‘Seek Funding’ Step Added To Scientific Method PARIS—In an effort to modernize the principles and empirical procedures of examining phenomena and advancing humanity’s collective knowledge, the International Council for Science announced Thursday the addition of a “Seek Funding” step to the scientific method. More. The friend who contributed this tip notes, This is what would happen if philosophers of science really looked at the process of science as currently practiced 🙂 A conference in tht? this time, Marseilles? Note: Top Rated journal:   See also: Retraction Watch and If peer review is working, why all the retractions? Follow UD News at Twitter!

We are not talking about journals that got in trouble for publishing Incorrect information that is most likely correct. Or information that, whether correct or not, happens to be controversial. Those types are soon dealt with. Nor are we talking about the usual parade of dodges and citation/review scams, or the sinkhole of manufacturing studies to “prove” what is already believed on poor evidence. No, we mean Up the Jolly Roger! This from From Science: According to a tip sent to Science, fraudsters are snatching entire Web addresses, known as Internet domains, right out from under academic publishers, erecting fake versions of their sites, and hijacking their journals, along with their Web traffic. Website spoofing has been around since the Read More ›

They’re calling it Diogenes. Here: Research Integrity and Peer Review is an international, peer reviewed Open Access journal that encompasses all aspects of integrity in research publication, including peer review, study reporting, and research and publication ethics. Particular consideration is given to submissions that address current controversies and limitations in the field and offer potential solutions. Note: They are not calling it Diogenes. Follow UD News at Twitter!

Here at Fortune: Elsevier Mutiny: Cracks Are Widening in the Fortress of Academic Publishing The editorial staff of a research journal have resigned to protest the company’s failure to embrace open access. A prestigious academic journal has just experienced the closest thing to outright mutiny: All six editors and the entire editorial board of the well-respected linguistics journal Lingua resigned en masse last week. And the reason says a lot about the ongoing disruption taking place in the formerly sleepy world of academic publishing. … In many ways, academic publishers are going through the same kind of wrenching change that traditional media companies like newspaper and magazine publishers are. Subscription-based business models that worked for decades are coming apart at the Read More ›

In science journals: Because of super-specialization, the authors of papers themselves are nowadays often asked to suggest referees for peer review of their own work, but this, of course, leaves an opening for the practice of fraud. In a modern variant on Gogol’s Dead Souls, some scientists have been caught sending their papers for peer review to non-existent reviewers, complete with a curriculum vitae and an e-mail address. The article quotes the author of a blog on scientific research called “Retraction Watch,” who said “This is officially becoming a trend:” an odd way to put it, since either it is a trend or it isn’t, official recognition having nothing to do with it. There are even companies in China, apparently, Read More ›

Please tell us it’s not true. From the Atlantic: In 2006, Daniel Oppenheimer, then a professor of psychology and public affairs at Princeton University, published research arguing that the use of clear, simple words over needlessly complex ones can actually make authors appear more intelligent. The research garnered him the Ig Nobel Prize in literature—a parody of the Nobel Prize that, according to a Slate article by the awards’ creator, Marc Abrahams, and several academics I consulted, is always given to improbable research and sometimes serves as a de facto criticism or satire in the academic world. (Oppenheimer for his part believes he got the award because of the paper’s title: “Consequences of Erudite Vernacular Utilized Irrespective of Necessity: Problems Read More ›

From Nature: Beall told Nature that he stands by his decision and that he has received dozens of e-mails from the scientific community outlining bad practices at Frontiers. Beall names some controversies that he says helped raise concerns about the Frontiers journals. These include a Frontiers in Psychology paper suggesting that conspiracy theorists do not believe in climate change and a Frontiers in Public Health paper raising questions about the link between HIV and AIDS. Both ignited Internet firestorms on publication. More. Real concerns? Backlash against open access publishing? Floor’s open. Re conspiracy theorists: It’s what they do believe in that—one would think—would be of more interest.