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If you were designing a train, would you seek input from car manufacturers? No? Maybe when building a hospital, you’d consult Heckler & Koch? Possibly not?

So why would anybody involve drinks manufacturers in formulating governmental alcohol policies?

Methodology A comparison was conducted of four draft National Alcohol Policy documents from Lesotho, Malawi, Uganda and Botswana using case study methods.

Findings The comparison indicated that the four drafts are almost identical in wording and structure and that they are likely to originate from the same source.

Quelle surprise. Our reviewer, Bayard Roberts of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, points out that if this sounds familiar, it is: the tobacco industry is similarly involved in the development of tobacco control policies in Africa.

Talking of things that might kill you, researchers in Toronto and Indiana have isolated and characterized two genes that confer resistance to arsenic in ferns, but that are missing from flowering plants (and us). The authors hypothesize that arsenite hyperaccumulation in P. vittata may have evolved to deter herbivores. It would be interesting to theorize what Dorothy L. Sayers might have made of this.

Third up this week is the problem of randomization. Is it a problem? Well, yes: anybody who has done even a small amount of computer programming will be able to tell you that generating truly random numbers is not as straightforward as it might look. Similarly for clinical trials;

Randomization is a key step for the success of a trial, and errors occurring during the process too often are not reported by the authors, mostly for insufficient internal and external controls of the process.

The paper, from Statistics Collaborative Inc. in Washington DC, describes common errors and shows how to avoid them. It could be useful for stats classes and should probably be required reading for all researchers, along with David Vaux’s tour de force on error bars (free full text).

And finally, a paper that got up my nose. Although nasal cavities get larger with age, ageing does not adversely affect nasal ‘quality of life’ in healthy individuals. I only mention this article because of the acronyms, really.

Evaluated papers

• Alcohol policies 10.1111/j.1360-0443.2009.02695.x (free full text)
• Arsenic plants 10.1105/tpc.109.069773 (free full text)
• Totally random 10.1177/1740774510368300
• NOSE SNOT 10.1016/j.anl.2009.09.012

Note: All links to F1000 are free, so that you can read the evaluations without a subscription.