News in a nutshell
| 16 August, 2010 | Adie Chan |
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Cite and be cited
Tit-for-tat seems to be par for the course in the scientific literature. An analysis of more than 53,000 scientific papers published over the past century in Science reveals that articles with longer reference lists were cited more than manuscripts that listed fewer references. “There is a ridiculously strong relationship between the number of citations a paper receives and its number of references,” Gregory Webster, the University of Florida psychologist who conducted the research, told Nature. “If you want to get more cited, the answer could be to cite more people.” Surprisingly, review articles — which typically include long reference lists — bucked the trend, showing less of a relationship between long reference lists and higher citation counts than original research articles.
Goodbye, Avastin?
The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is considering a move that would revoke approval for the use of Genentech’s Avastin for the treatment of late-stage breast cancer, according to the Washington Post. A panel of FDA advisers suggested rescinding Avastin’s approval because there is little evidence that the benefits of the expensive drug — it costs about $8,000 per month — outweigh its risks. Global sales of Avastin, which works by blocking blood flow to tumors and is the world’s #1 selling cancer drug, top $5.8 billion. As Avastin is also approved for the treatment of colon, lung, brain and kidney cancers, even if the FDA nixes it for the treatment of breast cancer, doctors could still prescribe it to those patients as an off-label use.
Image courtesy of NASA
Broad Alzheimer’s collaboration bearing fruit
A seven-year-old collaboration, which has pharmaceutical companies sharing data on Alzheimer’s disease with academics and government researchers, has divulged some interesting biomarkers that may serve as diagnostics for the neurodegenerative disorder. For example, a paper published last week in the Archives of Neurology detailed a cerebrospinal fluid test, where the levels of specific proteins indicate the presence of Alzheimer’s. University researchers, the National Institutes of Health, the FDA, and pharmaceutical companies entered the data-sharing scheme called the Alzheimer’s Disease Neuroimaging Initiative (ADNI) in 2003 to uncover new ways to diagnose and track the disease. The New York Times reports that more than 100 studies to test Alzheimer’s drugs are now under way, and the ADNI is serving as a model for a similar effort to detect biomarkers involved with Parkinson’s disease.
H1N1 is kaput
On Tuesday (10th August), the World Health Organization officially declared the H1N1 pandemic, which conquered headlines and sowed global fear last year, over. “The new H1N1 virus has largely run its course,” WHO Director-General Margaret Chan, told the Wall Street Journal Health Blog. Chan said that decision to formally stick a fork in swine flu as a pandemic was made because out-of-season outbreaks of the virus are no longer being reported. Though H1N1 may crop up again during this year’s flu season, which starts in a few months, other strains are likely to predominate.
Image courtesy of the Agricultural Research Service
Judge nixes GM sugar beets
A federal judge reversed the US Department of Agriculture’s approval of genetically modified sugar beets on Friday (13th August), stating that the USDA hadn’t adequately studied the potential environmental impacts of the crop, such as the spreading of modified genes to non-GM beets, Swiss chard or red table beets. The decision essentially bans farmers from planting 95 percent of sugar beets planted in the US, modified to be resistant to the herbicide Roundup, until the issue is resolved by the USDA. The suit was brought by the Center for Food Safety, an advocacy group opposed to GM crops, according to the New York Times.
Stem cell company sues filmmaker
$1.5 million in the hole, San Diego-based biotech Stemedica Cell Technologies is suing an independent filmmaker for his inability to use the money to produce a feature-length film about the creation of a stem cell company that mirrors Stemedica’s own history. Thom Mount, former president of Universal Pictures and a producer on hit movies “Smokey and the Bandit,” “Tequila Sunrise,” “Bull Durham,” and “Natural Born Killers,” finds himself at the receiving end of the suit, which alleges that he misused the funds given to him by The World Stem Cell Foundation, a nonprofit affiliated with Stemedica. This includes $815,000 that is still unaccounted for, according to court documents.
Related Stories:
[August 2010]
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Well heck, Mercedes payments are really high……………
Perhaps the reason why papers with “long citation lists” are cited more often is that those papers are higher quality papers to begin with!
Consider that perhaps a more scholarly scientist — one who does a better, more thorough job of documenting prior work relevant to the work being reported — is not only intellectually more thorough but also does better and/or more creative work than a less-scholarly or less-thorough scientist.
In other words, it’s not “rub my back and I’ll rub yours” as implied by the author of this piece, but rather “publish a trustworthy paper and I’ll pay attention to it.”
Others writing on this subject have commented that long citation lists are often just PubMed compilations that the authors may not have even read. Perhaps for the prepublication review process (or grant acceptance process) all cited authors should attest in wirting that they read every paper cited?
I agree, more in depth papers are more likely to cite and be cited. It is disingenuous to make this suggestion.
The news about H1N1 virus is not accurate. There was no information in WHO news release that other viruses will predominate in the next season. To the contrary, 2009 H1N1 strain will be most likely the the most frequently isolated H1N1 type virus. It became the part of the regular seasonal influenza landscape by kicking out the previous H1N1 strain. That’s why it is a part of the next season’s vaccine. So in fact the new pandemic strain is not causing pandemic anymore, but is here to stay. So, 2009 H1N1 virus is very far from being kaput.
Honestly, we don’t know the reason why manuscripts in Science with more references are cited more often. As a prior respondant mentioned, it could reflect a better prepared and more easily citable manuscript. Another easy explanation: A more mature topic will need more references and will be worked on by more investigators who collectively will cite the manuscript more often. This would be exacerbated by the ceiling on the number of citations suggested per manuscript by Science (40 references per Research Article and 30 references per Report) as any manuscript not being able to cite the maximum number of references truly is immature. No need to limit the explanation to ‘tit-for-tat’, although no one says that might not be the solution. One thing I do know is that cherry-picking conclusions from the data is, in my view, much too prevalent and very sad to see here.
Under the (not substantiated by any data I know of) explanation proposed above, citation rate includes incorporates the extent to which a mansucript is significant to a large number of researchers within a large field. What about topics of equal importance to our knowledge base that do not happen to be worked upon by many investigators? Are they cited less often because there are fewer people in the field? Are they cited more often because there are fewer competing citations for those who want to refer to that topic? An intersting, but impossible to implement, measurement of general impact would be the number of citations divided by the number of investigators in the field.
It seems interesting, at first sight, that
“tit for tat?” as mentioned in the tidbit about who cites and who is being cited is just the type of “news” that Science Magazine should stay away from. There is so much good, meaty, information that the magazine has always shared and continues to shares with us — both for popular science readers as well as serious researchers, I do not know why they felt a need to give this topic space. Perhaps August is a month when stimulating topics are scarce?As a scientific editor who reads manuscripts about very “hot” topics with lots being cited and very new topics where little has been done (the most exciting for researchers and readers of course), it is obvious that the new discoveries in more “niche” areas would perhaps be read less (and thus cited less) and have less references merely because of the “newness”…and little having been done in the area. It is such a “no brainer”, that I feel silly even writing this, but thought that I would support others who commented about the absolutely certain NO cause and effect as implied by the author. I hope that SCIENCE becomes more selective in the topics they choose to dedicate space to, as they have always done in the past. Content, even in this wonderfully rich format, should always be evaluated before being posted (in my humble opinion).
There’s a nice take-down of this ‘association’ over at the Scholarly Kitchen. I commend it to all our readers.
Although I see it more as an insightful and helpful critique than a ‘take down,’ I’d like to direct interested readers to a partial empirical rebuttal that I provide in Comment 4:
Although I cannot address the effects of section headings (which don