Tag: RESEARCH REPRODUCIBILITY

How would you change medical publishing? Authors offer bribes, New issues in informed consent, Why do predatory journals exist?

Margaret Winker, MDLeave a comment

FUTURE OF MEDICAL PUBLISHING

  • What would you change about medical publishing? Scholarly Kitchen offers some interesting perspectives. Share yours via Comments below.

If you could change one thing about scholarly publishing, what would that be? (Scholarly Kitchen blog)

EDITOR ETHICS

  • Editor receives offer of cash for publishing manuscripts

Pay to play? Three new ways companies are subverting academic publishing (Retraction Watch blog)

  • Editors step down after their citation cartel was discovered (European Geophysical Union)

http://retractionwatch.com/2017/03/03/citation-boosting-episode-leads-editor  (Retraction Watch blog)

RESEARCH ETHICS

  • Commentaries on new developments with informed consent: e-consent and internet-based clinical trials, changes in perceptions of risk, new types of risk

Informed Consent  (NEJM [free])

RESEARCH REPRODUCIBILITY

  • Should scientists attempt to replicate their own studies? They have an inherent desire (or conflict of interest) to see consistent results

Why Scientists Shouldn’t Replicate Their Own Work (Discover Magazine)

PREDATORY/PSEUDO-JOURNALS

Do predatory journals fill a niche?

Predatory Publishing as a Rational Response to Poorly Governed Academic Incentives (Scholarly Kitchen blog)

PEER REVIEW

  • A neuroscientist posts his peer reviews online, emails the authors, and tweets a link to his review (but only if the manuscript is available as a preprint)

The Rogue Neuroscientist on a Mission to Hack Peer Review (Wired Magazine)

Newsletter #3. Originally circulated March 7, 2017. Sources include Retraction Watch and Scholarly Kitchen. Providing the links and information does not imply WAME’s endorsement.

Publishing research with ethical lapses, P values, Reproducibility, WAME’s predatory journals statement

Margaret Winker, MDLeave a comment

RESEARCH ETHICS AND MISCONDUCT

  • An editorial by Bernard Lo and Rita Redberg discusses ethical issues in recently published research in which abnormal lab values were not conveyed to research participants: “Should a study with an ethical lapse be published?…Many journals will not publish research with grave ethical violations, such as lack of informed consent, lack of institutional review board (IRB) approval, or scientific misconduct. However, if violations are contested or less serious, as in this study, the ethical consensus has been to publish valid findings, together with an editorial to raise awareness of the ethical problems and stimulate discussion of how to prevent or address them.”

Addressing Ethical Lapses in Research (JAMA) [formerly free, now first PDF page visible]

  • What should research misconduct be called? “At the heart of the debate is the history of the term. In the U.S., in particular, lobbying from scientists dating to the 1980s has resulted in the term “misconduct” being codified to only refer to the cardinal sins of falsification, fabrication, and plagiarism. This has left lesser offenses, often categorized as “questionable research practices,” relatively free from scrutiny. Nicholas Steneck, a research ethicist at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, calls the term “artificial:”

Does labeling bad behavior “scientific misconduct” help or hurt research integrity? A debate rages (Retraction Watch Blog)

RESEARCH REPORTING AND STATISTICS

  • Hilda Bastian provides 5 tips for avoiding P value potholes: commonly encountered problems with how P values are used and interpreted.

5 Tips for Avoiding P-Value Potholes (Absolutely Maybe blog)

  • Videos on research methods related to epidemiology, by Greg Martin, MD, MPH, MBA (University of Witwatersrand, Ireland) — basic but useful for anyone wanting a quick well-done overview on a variety of research topics.

Epidemiology (YouTube)

  • For a bit of humor, The Five Diseases of Academic Publishing.

Got “significosis?” Here are the five diseases of academic publishing (Retraction Watch blog)

ACCESS, INDEXING

  • Acceptance rates for journals applying for membership to OASPA: “Between 2013 and 2015 we accepted fewer than 25% of the total number of applications we received. Some from 2016 are still undergoing review, but we expect the number of accepted applications for last year to fall below 10% once all are concluded. “

Identifying quality in scholarly publishing: Not a black and white issue (OASPA Blog)

RESEARCH REPRODUCIBILITY

  • Overcoming nonreproducibility in basic and preclinical research, by John Ioannidis: “The evidence for nonreproducibility in basic and preclinical biomedical research is compelling. Accumulating data from diverse subdisciplines and types of experimentation suggest numerous problems that can create a fertile ground for nonreproducibility. For example, most raw data and protocols are often not available for in-depth scrutiny and use by other scientists. The current incentive system rewards selective reporting of success stories.“

Acknowledging and Overcoming Nonreproducibility in Basic and Preclinical Research (JAMA) [formerly free, now first PDF page visible]

  • Research reported in newspapers has poor replication validity: “Journalists preferentially cover initial findings although they are often contradicted by meta-analyses and rarely inform the public when they are disconfirmed.“

Poor replication validity of biomedical association studies reported by newspapers (PLOS ONE)

PREDATORY/PSEUDO-JOURNALS

WAME published a new statement on Identifying Predatory or Pseudo-Journals.

Identifying Predatory or Pseudo-Journals (WAME)

____

WAME Newsletter #2, original version circulated February 23, 2017. Identified (in part) from Retraction Watch, Stat News, and Linked In Global Health. Providing the links and information does not imply WAME’s endorsement.