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Post-publication review: The monologue

Don’t expect a reply from the authors of that study you just publicly criticized by leaving a comment on the journal web page where it was published. A study conducted by BMJ found that of more than 100 studies published on the journal’s website that attracted substantive criticism, fewer than half of the papers’ authors responded to the criticism. Vehement criticism was no more likely to garner an author response than less damning critiques. “[A] mountain of poor quality unfocused literature has left its readership fatigued, numb, and passive,” wrote UCLA physician David Schriger and University of Oxford statistician Douglas Altman in an editorial that accompanied the study. “Each new paper is another monologue added to the heap. Few read it and fewer care. Errors remain unnoticed or un-noted, and no one seems terribly bothered.” Read more at the Scholarly Kitchen blog.

Peer review, privatized?

In somewhat related news, two ecologists have floated a brash plan to incentivize anonymous manuscript review. It aims to encourage reviewers who might otherwise pass on reviewing the work of their peers, while still expecting their own research to be reviewed, while fixing imbalance in the reviewing workload. Jeremy Fox of the University of Calgary and University of Sheffield researcher Owen Petchey suggest privatizing the peer review process by providing reviewers with symbolic currency called “PubCreds” as payment for reviewing services in an article published in the July issue of the Bulletin of the Ecological Society of America. Review an article, receive one PubCred. Collect three of them, and you can submit your own work for review. While Fox and Petchey claim their system can stop qualified scientists (but lazy reviewers) from gaming the system, commentators at the Scholarly Kitchen blog have criticized the plan, writing that it could diminish the quality of reviews or lead to reduced research productivity.

US Congress talks stem cells

United States Senators assembled on Thursday (16th September) to discuss the precarious state of federally-funded embryonic stem cell research in the wake of the temporary injunction issued by a federal judge last month. Though Judge Royce Lamberth’s injunction, which barred the National Institutes of Health from funding any research involving human embryonic stem cells, was put on hold by a higher court while it considers the case, stem cell researchers around the country fear for the survival of their field. Two prominent scientists, the University of Michigan’s Sean Morrison and George Daley of Harvard University, testified before the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education, telling lawmakers that their labs have been in turmoil since Lamberth’s injunction. “With the recent upheavals, scientists have again been reminded that human embryonic stem cell research is on fragile and fickle footing,” Daley — who also said that one of his PhD students had to abandon a study using embryonic stem cells treat sickle cell anemia — told the subcommittee. NIH director Francis Collins echoed Daley’s sentiment: “Today there is a cloud hanging over this field.” Meanwhile, the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, to which the Obama administration appealed the original injunction, scheduled 30 minutes of oral arguments set to take place next Monday (27th September).

Woo retractions

More details surface regarding Savio Woo, the Mount Sinai Medical Center researcher at the middle of a storm of questions surrounding his work on gene therapy, as news comes that two of the postdoctoral fellows under his supervision were dismissed from the institution for “research misconduct,” according Mount Sinai spokesperson Ian Michaels, who spoke to the Retractions Watch blog. Three  major journals — Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Human Gene Therapy, and the Journal of the National Cancer Institute — recently retracted papers authored by Woo and others. It appears as though the papers contained duplicated micrographs among other potential problems. According to ScienceInsider, the names of postdocs Li Chen and Zhiyu Li were recently removed from Mount Sinai’s directory. Chen and Li were listed as first authors on the retracted papers.

Spanish science under the knife

Spanish scientists are bracing for more bad news in what has already been a tough year for research in the country. According to ScienceInsider, rumors are circulating that Spain’s Science and Innovation Minister Cristina Garmendia may step down from her government post and return to research in the biotech sector. In an interview with Spain’s El Confidencial newspaper, Garmendia cited recent cuts to the country’s science budget as the main reason for her desire to leave. The budget of Spain’s Ministry of Science and Education was slashed by 15% in the 2010 budget, and further cuts in the 2011 budget are expected. All of this news is still somewhere between rumor and reality for the moment, as Spain continues to hash out its budgetary details, but things don’t look bright for the state of Spanish science.

Chocolate, decoded

Researchers have cracked the cacao bean, sequencing the genome of the plant that chocolate makers use to create the sweet treat. Funded by Mars Inc., researchers working for the Cacao Genome Database project announced their accomplishment on the project’s website last Wednesday (15th September). The Theobroma cacao sequence took more than 10 years to resolve, and is thought to contain about 35,000 genes.

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