Peer-to-peer

From Nature 454, 928; 21 August 2008:
The US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) plans to publish in peer-reviewed journals much of the scientific evidence it used to pin the 2001 anthrax attacks on microbiologist Bruce Ivins.
Ivins's suicide on 29 July means that the government's case against him will never be heard in court. The trickle of circumstantial evidence released in an investigation that had previously fingered the wrong man has lawmakers, scientists and others clamouring for more information.
In response, the FBI invited scientists and journal editors to a briefing in Washington DC on 18 August to discuss the science of the case and investigators' conclusion that a single man carried out the multiple, deadly mailings of anthrax spores. But FBI officials admit that some mysteries of the case may never be resolved. "I don't think we're ever going to put the suspicions to bed," said Vahid Majidi, assistant director of the division of weapons of mass destruction at the FBI. "There's always going to be a spore on a grassy knoll."
In lieu of expert witnesses and cross-examinations, the FBI plans to offer the evidence for peer review and will keep much of the data quiet until they are published. FBI laboratory director Chris Hassell anticipates a dozen or so papers related to the case, in addition to those that have already been published. However, Hassell says, some details of the investigation will remain confidential, so that potential bioterrorists won't know exactly what they're up against. "It's just what we have to do for national security," he says.
"Given that Ivins cannot stand trial, putting the data through the rigorous process of scientific review may be the best available alternative," says Alan Pearson, director of the biological and chemical weapons control programme at the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation in Washington DC.

Continue reading "Science of anthrax case will be submitted to peer-review" »

Posted by Maxine Clarke on August 21, 2008
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Charles Darwin comments on the latest UK government initiative to engage society as a whole with science: "Scientists pressed, sweating into corners as costermongers, corn-chandlers, dogs meat men, chimneysweep’s boys, executioner’s assistants, crimps, pimps, organ grinders, grooms of the stool, fullers, gentlemen of the road, members of the aristocracy and ladies of the night (to mention but a few) all clamour to press on you their views on string theory, stem cell therapy, plate tectonics or catalytic cracking.
The government has called for Society to have its say on science. I hope your supervisors and lab managers will be patient as you listen to the throngs at the gates of your institutions, and that you will wear extravagent disguises when in public to avoid molestation by the public anxious to press their scientific opinions on you."

On a more serious but less entertaining note, the Science and Society Strategy initiative aims to capture a range of views from the general public, scientists, businesses, media, education and government. It seeks input on three key areas:
* How to improve communication, generate interest, increase participation and convey the relevance of science;
* How to build trust and confidence in scientific research in the public and private sectors; and
* How to inspire young people from diverse backgrounds to become tomorrow's skilled scientists.
In what is believed to be the first website of its type for a Government consultation, an online interactive hub has been established to capture the feedback. It features discussion forums, videos and an interactive consultation document allowing visitors to respond to the entire strategy or to the perspectives of invited scientists, science communicators, broadcasters, policymakers and businesspeople on topics such as science teaching, how to reward good "public engagement" work and how to develop scientific literacy. The consultation will run until 17 October 2008. It is not clear from the website how the responses will be assessed. As well as commenting at the Science and Society Strategy website, you are also very welcome to contribute to the online conversation at Charles Darwin's blog.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on July 21, 2008
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Ignazio R. Marino* writes in Correspondence in the current issue of Nature (453, 449; 22 May 2008):
'Italy must invest more in science and technology' according to I. Bertini, S. Garattini and R. Rappuoli in Correspondence (Nature 452, 685; 2008). They lament the Italian lack of financial resources and political attention for research, technology and education. As a researcher, clinician and academician, I share their concerns. However, as former chair of the health committee of the Italian Senate, I take exception to their implication that none of the major political parties recognizes science, technology and education as crucial for the future of the country's economy.
The 2007 and 2008 national budget laws, drawn up when the centre-left coalition was in power, allocated 96 million (US$149 million) to projects submitted by researchers under 40 years old. These are judged by an international committee comprising ten scientists under 40 — five from foreign institutions — selected according to impact factor and citation index scores. This alone is a revolutionary approach for the unregulated Italian system of research funding allocation.
In spite of such advances, Italy is still far behind in research investment, and this needs to change. But the crucial switch is not simply to increase funding. The way the new government should proceed is to reform the allocation criteria for funding and to start applying across the board the selection and evaluation rules of peer review. Such a system would acknowledge meritocracy and free researchers from the virtual slavery under which they have been kept by old academicians.
By applying international rules of peer review and evaluating grant applications only on the basis of merit, looking at curricula and objectives, comparing lists of publications and evaluating results, we will provide opportunities for Italy's scientists, thereby promoting the country's intellectual, cultural and economic growth.
*Department of Surgery, Jefferson Medical College, 19107 Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA, and Senate of the Republic of Italy, Piazza Madama snc, 00186 Rome, Italy.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on May 27, 2008
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Massimo Pinto has discovered an unusual qualification for being a peer-reviewer: paying your taxes. Since 2006, Italians have been allowed to donate 0.5 per cent of their taxes to charity in a highly specific way (previously, such donations had to be made to the church or the state). On his Nature Network blog Science in the Bel Paese, Dr Pinto points out that one can elect to donate one's contribution to specific research institutes. Leaving aside the fact that some of the intended recipients do not yet seem to have received their 2006 or 2007 contributions, specifying an individual project could have the effect of bypassing the peer-review system, particularly in Italy, where science funding levels are low. Dr Pinto writes that taxpayers have three choices:

--donate to funding agencies. It happens in many countries of the world. As long as the agency is committed to assign that money in a transparent manner, including, possibly, peer review, that should be fine.
--donate to individual institutes. In this way, taxpayers may be exercising a little peer-review power. Less troublesome, perhaps, if the institute acts, internally, as the agency above. Still, it is not obvious why institute A should be so much better than institute B. Maybe the cleverest scientist, with the best idea right now, is in institute B.
--donate to a specific project. Here the taxpayers are exercising bolder peer-review powers, and that raises a red flag

Posted by Maxine Clarke on May 06, 2008
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This post is a continuation of the discussion about blogging and peer-review by selected reactions at RealClimate (a climate scientists' community blog) to Nature Geoscience's two commentaries on blogging.

Philip Machanick writes that the "problem with blogs is that there is no way for an outsider to know which are reasonably careful creations of informed scientists, which are opinions of the scientifically illiterate, and which are astroturf creations designed to confuse critics of science that is in conflict with an industry. Given that terrain, I would rather have something like RealClimate than not: it helps to balance things out. Errors tend to be corrected quickly here as a consequence of a large informed readership (even if it is sometimes annoying that you get drive-by ignoramuses who don’t benefit from getting their misconceptions answered). He goes on to suggest that a site such as RealClimate is of value in providing a forum for rebuttals of peer-reviewed science in order to develop a consensus on whether a "formally published rebuttal is worth the effort".

Ray Ladbury's view: "When it comes to peer reviewed papers, one has to presume the reader will have a minimum level of familiarity with the subject matter. One also presumes that the reader will have a day job, and so the question becomes whether the information in the paper is of sufficient interest to the average scientist in the community to say, “Hey, take a look at this. It looks mostly correct to me and has some interesting information/insights/methods…” This is not in any way the gold standard in the sciences. The gold standard comes when the community as a whole says, “Hey, cool, I can use this.” The paper is cited. The techniques are used. Science advances. Eventually, what was in the paper becomes part of the tacit knowledge assumed by reviewers.
The tacit knowledge one can presume for a blog like Realclimate is much lower. One presumes there is an interest in the subject–why else would the reader be perusing the blog. One presumes at least a passing acquaintance with the scientific method and maybe some familiarity with basic results like conservation of energy, etc. One could perhaps assume that the average reader has taken the time to acquaint him- or herself with material to which one is vectored via the “Start Here” button–although this is far from Universal.
For the average newspaper reader of a science story, the tacit knowledge is nearly nonexistent–or worse, wrong. And then we have the blogosphere, where information density is at best, rarified and often toxic.......in an information economy, it seems that all too many readers and journalists are content to remain paupers."

Posted by Maxine Clarke on April 29, 2008
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Continuing the discussion of the relative contributions of blogs and the peer-reviewed literature to scientific understanding, I'm highlighting another reaction to the two Nature Geoscience Commentaries presenting different perspectives.
In the comment thread at Real Climate blog, Simon Donner of the University of British Columbia writes:

"Blogs have created a forum for many people to informally discuss science. They are also a great forum for scientists to provide context to their own work and to the work of others in their field.
And some of the time, that may take the form of criticism. That’s ok. But we do have to be careful in blurring the line too much between peer-reviewed publications and blogs. The first problem is the obvious one. Blog posts are unfiltered, un-reviewed, and often written off the cuff, while journal articles are screened, reviewed, and (should be) meticulously researched. It is far easier to write a criticism of a paper on one’s blog than to write a response and submit it to the journal. The issue isn’t just that no reviewers check the work… the blog author is unlikely to do even close to the amount of research and analysis nor give the wording nearly the same level of consideration as is expected in a paper submitted to a high-quality, peer-reviewed journal.
The other problem is that blog posts are readily accessible to anyone at anytime, both in language, and in the unlicensed nature of the internet. To a huge swath of the public, blog posts are the face of science. Like it or not, bloggers with scientific credentials are like self-appointed ambassadors for science. If we are going to write about our science, we should do it with thought, and we should do it well. That is a standard that myself and many other science bloggers often struggle to meet."

Posted by Maxine Clarke on April 16, 2008
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From Nature 452; 677; 2008:
A federal magistrate in Massachusetts last week ruled that The New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) does not have to comply with a subpoena issued by Pfizer forcing the journal to provide confidential peer-review documents related to the painkillers Celebrex (celecoxib) and Bextra (valdecoxib).
The drug firm had tried to compel the journal to hand over peer reviews and internal editorial discussions for 11 papers on the painkillers. It argued that these would help it defend the arthritis drugs in lawsuits alleging that they caused heart attacks and strokes (see Nature 452, 6–7 ; 2008 and this post on Spoonful of Medicine blog).
In his 12-page opinion, Leo Sorokin wrote that the material Pfizer sought seemed relevant on first examination, but that “NEJM's interest in maintaining the confidentiality of the peer-review process is a very significant one … and tip[s] the scales in favor of the NEJM" .
The judgement comes three weeks after an Illinois judge ruled against Pfizer after it issued almost identical subpoenas to The Journal of the American Medical Association and Archives of Internal Medicine.
The Nature journals' guidelines for reviewers state: "Reviewers should be aware that it is our policy to keep their names confidential, and that we do our utmost to ensure this confidentiality. Under normal circumstances, blind peer-review is protected from legislation. We cannot, however, guarantee to maintain this confidentiality in the face of a successful legal action to disclose identity in the event of a reviewer having written personally derogatory comments about the authors in his or her reports. For this reason as well as for reasons of standard professional courtesy, we request reviewers to refrain from personally negative comments about the authors of submitted manuscripts. Frank comments about the scientific content of the manuscripts, however, are strongly encouraged by the editors."
We are advised that if peer-reviewers follow this advice, it would be extremely unlikely that there could be legal grounds to force their identities to be revealed.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on April 11, 2008
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The two Nature Geoscience Commentaries expressing opposing views on blogging's role in science research communication have been much discussed in the blogosphere (see Climate Feedback blog, for example.). One discussion took place at RealClimate blog, where Gavin Schmidt's post about his Nature Geoscience view on how science blogs and traditional peer-review intersect has attracted more than 100 online comments from climate scientists and others.
One commenter, "Tamino", writes: "Blogs don’t serve very well for communication among scientists. Peer review does more than just protect us from being inundated with substandard work; it protects authors from their own mistakes and improves the quality of what we write. Peer review itself is an immensely valuable avenue of communication; who among us hasn’t at some time included a phrase like “We thank an anonymous referee for comments and suggestions which dramatically improved the final manuscript”?
But as bad as blogs are for actual research, peer-reviewed journals are far worse for communicating with and educating the lay reader. Yet when it comes to climate science the lay public is hungry for knowledge, and many of them are eager, and well-prepared, for a level of sophistication and detail that can’t be found in lay journalism or even popular literature; An Inconvenient Truth isn’t enough. So blogs serve an incredibly useful purpose, enabling the interested and well-educated reader to share insights with researchers who are at the cutting edge of new knowledge.....................while blogs aren’t part of the machinery for legitimate scientific research, they’re an indispensible tool for communication and combating misinformation."

More to follow.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on April 10, 2008
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The first phase of the NIH review of the peer-review system was completed on 28 February , when the final draft of the 2007–2008 Peer Review Self-Study was submitted to NIH (US National Institutes of Health). In advance of NIH's announcement this Spring about the changes to be implemented, this month's (April) Editorial in Nature Medicine (14, 351; 2008) explores whether the NIH recommendations of a major overhaul of the system are likely to be cosmetic or curative.
The grant review process is onerous for both applicants and reviewers. According to the report, the success rate of first-time applicants (for A0 grants) is on the order of eight per cent. On average, investigators submit a grant three times before securing funding. Reviews can vary dramatically depending on the study section, and funding decisions often seem arbitrary. From a reviewer's standpoint, applications are long and numerous (about seven per reviewer), and the large time commitment dissuades many of the best-qualified people from participating in a process that lacks uniform review criteria, consistency and, arguably, objectivity. The report identifies seven main challenges to enhancing NIH peer review, each of which is described in the Nature Medicine Editorial. But, as the Editorial points out, the problem of too many researchers chasing too few dollars remains. More money won't alleviate administrative burden or improve the quality of reviews.
NIH's Enhancing peer-review report and next steps can be viewed here.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on April 07, 2008
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Scientists know much more about their field than is ever published in peer-reviewed journals. Blogs can be a good medium with which to disseminate this tacit knowledge, according to Gavin Schmidt of the NASA Goddard Institute of Space Studies Columbia University, and co-founder of RealClimate.org, in a Commentary in the April issue of Nature Geoscience (1, 208; 2008). Dr Schmidt asks "why read a blog when you can go directly to the scientific literature? Unfortunately, access to new findings in the traditional way is harder than it should be. Many technical papers are behind pay-walls, which make it impractical and expensive for unaffiliated individuals to read them. More importantly, however, even when papers are freely available, they often do not provide the insight expected."
In another Commentary in the same issue of the journal (Nat. Geosci. 1, 209; 2008), Myles Allen of the University of Oxford agrees that "explaining science to journalists and the public on blogs is fast and efficient." But after his own bruising experience, he wonders: "is it all just too good to be true? Can science survive Web 2.0?"
After describing his own difficult experiences of having his own peer-reviewed work criticised and misinterpreted by people who would not subject their own conclusions to peer-review, Dr Allen concludes: "Everyone agrees we need to communicate science better to the general public. But more and faster should not be confused with better. I'm certainly not advocating closing science blogs or discouraging science websites. We just need to remember the basic courtesies that our doctoral supervisors took for granted: criticism of peer-reviewed results belongs in the peer-reviewed literature. Direct communication over the Internet, far from creating a level playing field, just ploughs it up and makes the game impossible. The problem is, without witty and cutting criticisms, what is the point of a blog? Sure, the peer-review system is creaking. Sure, science journalism sometimes trips up. But like Churchill's quip about democracy, it is the worst possible system for communicating scientific results, apart from all the alternatives that have been tried from time to time."
Yet Dr Schmidt remains optimistic: "Some may dismiss blogs as being a distraction from real scientific work, or of egging on the very controversies that we seek to diffuse. There is an element of truth to both of these claims. But the response should not be a return to the ivory tower. That simply leaves the field clear for those who prefer to confuse rather than enlighten. With the importance of science in policy decisions being more apparent than ever, our ability to do science and enhance its relevance in public life relies on the community's willingness to engage, inspire and inform. Blogs are one way to do that, and they can excel at providing the context that is so often missing in other media. Not every scientist needs to have one, but maybe every scientific field does."

Posted by Maxine Clarke on April 01, 2008
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In an analysis reported in a News story in Nature this week, 222 NIH grants: 22 researchers (Nature 452, 258-259; 2008), it emerges that 200 scientists received six or more grants each from the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) in 2007. One principal investigator was awarded 32 grants, and many others got eight or nine. This is counter to the recommendation last month by the advisory panels reviewing the NIH peer-review system that researchers should devote at least 20% of their time to any project awarded a research grant (see Nature 451, 1035; 2008).
According to the Nature news story, NIH director Elias Zerhouni says that the inequities between the haves and have-nots were caused by a doubling of NIH funding between 1998 and 2003. As funding levels rose, many new PhD positions were created. Established investigators, using data produced by the new PhDs, were able to submit better grant proposals. But hordes of these grant-hungry PhDs were left standing when NIH funding flattened out after 2003. The agency now funds significantly more people over the age of 70 than under the age of 30. “We're eating our seedcorn,” says Zerhouni. Changes to the NIH peer-review system will be unveiled in mid-April.

See the related article by Gene Russo in NatureJobs (Nature 421, 381; 2008).

Posted by Maxine Clarke on March 20, 2008
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In a blaze of colour on the 11 November 'op-ed' (invited opinion) page of The New York Times, some scientists proclaimed that, based on analysis of brain-imaging data from just a handful of swing voters, they had divined what the rest of the undecided masses truly think about the upcoming US presidential elections. Apparently just asking them was simply not good enough.

So opens an Editorial in the current issue of Nature (450, 457; 2007), which goes on to describe how the authors of the New York Times piece used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to scan the subjects' brains while looking at pictures of candidates. The Nature Editorial goes on:

"The op-ed work has not been published in a peer-reviewed journal, and the article is self-evidently too insubstantial in scientific detail to assess the strength of either the methods or the data. A group of cognitive neuroscientists was swift to object to its conclusions — which veer close to a modern-day phrenology — in a response to The New York Times.
The results described in the op-ed are apparently the claims of a commercial product posing as a scientific study. This is only partially transparent. Three of the authors list their affiliation with FKF Applied Research, a company based in Washington DC that is notorious for using similar brain-scan analysis to conclude which TV adverts aired during a major sporting event were most effective. In its own words, the company is a "business intelligence firm selling fMRI brain scan-based research to Fortune 500 companies".
Articles on The New York Times op-ed pages are opinionated by definition, and shouldn't normally require peer review. But here, the paper's editors have instead published the results of (to put it mildly) questionable scientific research, disseminating this information to millions of their readers who may not have the background to recognize for themselves the absurdity of some of the authors' conclusions.
Although it is a gross disservice to science and indeed to politics, it is a great deal for the company. Scientific publication would have required the authors to divulge their data and qualify their assumptions — and some journals might even have required that they declare their financial interests. Whatever the motives, seducing The New York Times' editors with the allure of Technicolor brains lighting up with Hillary Clinton angst yielded no more or less than a multimedia advertisement for the company's product to millions of readers."

Posted by Maxine Clarke on November 26, 2007
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Mark Henderson in The Times yesterday (25 October 2007, page 36) reported the results of a survey of 204 researchers drawn from all levels in science, from the heads of major institutions to postdoctoral researchers and PhD candidates, concluding that "excessive regulation of science is damaging public confidence in research by creating a misleading impression that most of it is dangerous or ethically dubious."
According to the Institutue of Ideas survey, scientists feel that strict laws covering experiments on animals, embryos and human tissue have a negative, rather than positive, effect on public perceptions of their work. The study will be discussed on Sunday 28 October as part of the Battle of Ideas festival, sponsored by The Times, at the Royal College of Art, London (tickets available via the link). There is a long list of speakers, from all walks of life including science, the arts, politics and journalism, which can be seen at this page. Other scientific topics to be discussed include climate change, particle physics, and the teaching of evolution.
The Battle of Ideas festival describes itself as "An initiative to bring together different strands of social, political, scientific, academic and cultural discussion into an annual festival." The survey will be debated in the session "What are the barriers to science in the 21st century?" Tony Gilland, of the Institute of Ideas, who organised the survey, told The Times: “If we really want value for money from publicly funded scientists then we have to be willing to allow them to pursue their curiosity and see what comes of it. A scientist’s peers are best placed to judge whether their work is excellent or mediocre. Today the mark of a ‘good’ scientist seems to be all about whether they are prepared to doff their cap to the externally imposed constraints of ethics committees and regulators or the Government’s demands for short-term economic or social benefits from their work.”

Posted by Maxine Clarke on October 26, 2007
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A High Court judge today ruled that Al Gore's film An Inconvenient Truth can be shown in UK schools only if it is accompanied by a disclaimer to explain nine scientific errors. The Times Online carries a list of the nine errors specified by the judge.
In The Times newspaper edition today (11 October), Lewis Smith, the paper's environment correspondent, reports that despite the errors, the judge said "many of the claims made by the film were fully backed up by the weight of science. He identified “four main scientific hypotheses, each of which is very well supported by research published in respected, peer-reviewed journals and accords with the latest conclusions of the IPCC”. "
Is this the first time that peer-review has helped to decide what can be shown, and taught, in schools in the United Kingdom?
Climate Feedback, the blog of Nature Reports Climate Change, features some more details of the story, together with some links to other articles and opinions.
The Royal Society's overview of the current state of scientific understanding of climate change is here.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on October 11, 2007
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The (free access) Editorial in this week's Nature (Nature 449, 115; 2007) argues that "the peer-review system used by the $29-billion National Institutes of Health (NIH) is more than half-a-century old, and is showing its age. It has become stretched by the breadth of today's science, in which inter- and multidisciplinary grant applications are common, and by the sheer volume of submissions in an era in which one-grant labs have gone the way of the dinosaur......A radical transformation is urgently needed."
The Editorial describes how the NIH solicited ideas from leaders of scientific societies in Washington DC this summer, and will contine to gather opinons at meetings in Chicago, New York and San Francisco this month and next. About 2,000 electronic opinions were also submitted. The goal is to create concrete recommendations by early this winter, with pilot projects to follow as soon as next spring.
The NIH have asked for 'creative' and even 'radical' ideas. One such, states the Nature Editorial, is the proposal of the Association of American Medical Colleges to "allow individual scientists to have only one application of a given kind in the system at any one time. Multiple grants could still be held by one scientist, but he or she could have only one application per mechanism under review. This would compel self-selection of the best proposals by scientists upstream of the review process. To be workable, this would necessitate a funding cycle that lasts at most six months rather than the current ten. But that compression is highly desirable in any case and has already been accomplished in pilot trials.
Such an approach can only help the most creative scientists by stemming the current deluge of applications. It's a radical idea but, for that reason at least, an excellent one."
The full text of the Editorial is available here.
The NIH Center for Scientific Review is here.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on September 13, 2007
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The National Science Foundation (NSF) held a research workshop "Making sense of the broader impacts of science and technology" earlier this month (5 - 7 August), to reflect on why (rather than how) scientists and engineers ought to address the broader impacts of their research. A preliminary report of the workshop is now available (PDF).

The NSF recently changed its "merit review" criteria to require scientists to address these broader impacts, and the workshop was held to explain why the criteria were changed, and to address some key questions, including:
How much freedom should the scientific and engineering community be granted to set the terms of its research?
Why is "the integration of research and education" an important value scientists and engineers ought to uphold? What would such integration actually entail?
Why should scientists and engineers seek to expand the participation of underrepresented groups?
What are the links between science and politics?
Why should scientists and engineers worry about the broader impacts of their research? Do scientists and engineers have a responsibility to pursue research directed toward pressing societal needs when their research is publicly funded?
Is basic research in science and engineering value-neutral?
Do other funding agencies ask applicants to talk about societal benefits?
How can basic researchers articulate the broader impacts of their research?
What does "broader impacts" mean anyway?
The organisers of the NSF meeting welcome your comments and suggestions on the preliminary report and on the questions discussed.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on August 22, 2007
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The ethics of journalism don't work for science | comment | EducationGuardian.co.uk

Professor (of philosophy) Jonathan Wolff describes (in the article at the above link) hearing a lecture and reading a subsequent published article in a scientific journal (Science) by Professor Naomi Oreskes. Prof Oreskes surveyed hundreds of peer-reviewed articles on climate change, none of which "denied that the Earth was warming or that human action was at least partially responsible." The sceptics, she argued, were largely members of independent think-tanks, publishing their own reports without external review.
Yet when Prof Oreskes published her article, writes Prof Wolff, she "was immediately shot down by bloggers, journalists and think-tankers, who mixed insults about her honesty with more plausible-sounding complaints about her methodology. Oreskes replied, with great restraint, that she would wait for the peer-reviewed criticisms."
His observation led Prof Wolff to contrast journalistic and scientific ethics. In reporting political arguments, each claim must be countered so that a lively debate can take place and readers come to their own views, he writes. Journalists are mistaken in applying the same ethical code of 'balance' to scientific reporting. "Whenever a story on climate change is produced, a maverick nay-sayer is rolled out for the sake of balance. But this misleads the public into thinking that a few lone voices have equal weight to the scientific orthodoxy." Prof Wolf also provides the example of the few people who deny a role for HIV in AIDS, yet make a disproportionate amount of noise.
Can non-scientists understand scientific discussions, asks Wolff? "We all study science for a few years, but learn - or at least remember - very little about methodology. Science is presented as a body of known truths. As adults, though, we need to know not the atomic number of chlorine, but how to assess evidence for or against a theory."

Posted by Maxine Clarke on July 03, 2007
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Ariberto Fassati of the Division of Infection and Immunity, University College London Medical School, writes in Correspondence in this week's Nature (447, 528; 2007):

Sydney Brenner and Richard Robert's request in Correspondence (Nature 446, 725; 2007) for authors to conserve records of their work and make them freely accessible is of great importance to historians of science.

However, unlike an artist's preparatory sketches or a novelist's drafts, scientific papers describing major discoveries have gone through the process of peer review. Reviewers often make significant contributions in shaping discoveries. They suggest new experiments, propose novel interpretations and reject some papers outright. Clearly, this is also important 'behind the scenes' work by scientists usually at the forefront of their discipline, and is an intrinsic part of the scientific process. It is well worth keeping a record of such work, for no history of science will be complete and accurate without it.

I therefore propose that journals' records should be made publicly available after an adequate lapse of time, including the names of reviewers and the confidential comments exchanged between editors and reviewers. The Nobel Foundation makes all its records available after 50 years, as do many governmental and other institutions. This delay may be reduced for scientific journals to, perhaps, 15 or 20 years. This is also likely to have a positive impact on the peer-review process itself.

The scientific community and future historians will gain from this transparency and from full knowledge of all the events that have contributed to a great discovery.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on May 31, 2007
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An article in the San Francisco Chronicle (31 March) outlines the process by which awards were given by the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine, the state's new $3 billion stem cell research programme. Public peer-review is a central component. According to the Chronicle, a panel of out-of-state experts ranked the proposals in private meetings, and the identities of the also-rans were not revealed. But the names of the successful applicants, and surprisingly candid summaries of the panel's reviews, were made public on the stem cell agency's web site. As the Chronicle put it: "the summaries offer a rare glimpse into the traditionally cloistered world of scientific peer review." So far as I am aware, this is not so much rare as unprecedented.
The full Chronicle article can be seen here.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on April 04, 2007
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Shaping the Message, Distorting the Science - Center for Media and Democracy

Sheldon Rampton, Research Director of the Center for Media and Democracy, is testifying today (28 March) before the US House of Representatives Committee on Science and Technology in a hearing entitled "Shaping the Message, Distorting the Science: Media Strategies to Influence Science Policy." Mr Rampton's written testimony is available here, and a webcast of the hearing is available here. Mr Rampton discusses the reliability of scientific knowledge, and the way in which it has been, and is, used as a tool to manipulate public opinion. He provides some examples of cases in which industries (such as the tobacco and petroleum industries) have undermined the journal peer-review process, and concludes:

"The manipulation of science for public relations or political advantage inevitably has a corrupting effect on science itself. It undermines the integrity and objectivity of scientific research. It creates confusion in the minds of policymakers and the general public. What is needed, therefore, is greater public transparency regarding the sponsorship of science and of organizations that claim to speak on scientific matters. The public and policymakers have a right and to know who is funding research, what strings are attached to that funding, and how it may be affecting the information we use to make decisions—especially decisions on policy matters that affect us all."

Rampton has authored numerous articles, commentaries and books (with John Stauber) on the subject of this testimony ,including Trust Us We're Experts: How Industry Manipulates Science and Gambles With Your Future ; and Toxic Sludge Is Good For You: Lies, Damn Lies and the Public Relations Industry.

See here for the website of "Shaping the message, distorting the science": US House of Representatives.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on March 28, 2007
Categories: Ethics, Policy and Public, Quality and value | Permalink | Comments (0)

Open Call From the Patent Office - washingtonpost.com

The Washingtonpost.com reports (link above) that the US Patent and Trademark Office is starting a pilot project that will not only post patent applications on the Web and invite comments, but also use a community rating system designed to push the most respected comments to the top of the file, for serious consideration by the agency's examiners. The Washingtonpost.com article compares the the system to that used by Wikipedia, the popular user-created online encyclopedia.

The "peer to patent" project starts next week (week of 2 April) with a pilot programme, led by the Institute for Information Law and Policy at New York Law School and the US Patent and Trademark Office. The pilot will initially accept 250 patent applications from companies including IBM, Intel, Oracle, Hewlett-Packard and Microsoft.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on March 28, 2007
Categories: Policy and Public, Systems | Permalink | Comments (0)

From ABC News: WASHINGTON, March 19, 2007 — - "A top government climate scientist told Congress today that political appointees without scientific backgrounds are corrupting the scientific process and confusing the public by censoring scientists and improperly editing their research on global warming.
"I believe that the nature of these edits is a good part of the reason for why there is a substantial gap between the understanding of global warming by the relevant scientific community and the knowledge of the public and policymakers," said James Hansen, director of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies. "There has been so much doubt cast on our understanding that they think it's still completely up in the air." "
Republican critics strongly disagreed with Dr Hansen's views. The hearing is the latest of several to explore government censorship of climate scientists at NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).
The full ABC News article is available here.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on March 20, 2007
Categories: Policy and Public | Permalink | Comments (0)

The Voice of San Diego features an interesting article on the role of peer-review in earmarked government-funded projects. The article is about a proposal to build two new dams in California, but it addresses the more general question of the usefulness of earmaking federal money to particular academic institutions for specific research. According to the Voice of San Diego, 10 per cent of the US$30 billion "pork barrel" annual spend now goes to universities.

Critics of the process say that the earmarking diverts funding from projects that have been rigoriously peer-reviewed by expert panels -- not least when institutions likely to benefit spend money on Washington lobbyists. The recipient insitutions, naturally, beg to differ, as the money can mean a new lab or high-tech equipment. An interesting debate follows on where to draw the line between scientific scrutiny and "obvious public good".

Posted by Maxine Clarke on January 18, 2007
Categories: Policy and Public | Permalink | Comments (0)

Andrew Dessler, in his Gristmill blog, reports on yesterday's (17 January) Capitol Hill briefing on science and politics. From Mr Dessler's report:

"First, I argued that the scientific assessment process is the best way to determine what the scientific community thinks about a particular scientific issue.

The key to my argument is that credible scientific advice emerges from a credible process. Scientific results gain credibility by passing peer review, and then being re-tested and multiply verified by the scientific community. In that way, hypotheses are converted into "facts." Scientific advice to policymakers gains credibility by relying on peer-reviewed analyses and then going through multiple levels of peer-review -- as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reports do.

As a result, the IPCC reports are gold-standard statements of what the scientific community knows about the climate and how confidently we know it.

The worst way to determine what the science tells us, as evidenced by Inhofe's last stand, is a Congressional hearing. There is no guarantee that what the "scientists" at those hearings say is true. There's no peer review of any statement, no fact checking -- it's a free-for-all. If you don't believe me, take a look at some of the statements trotted out by David Deming and Bob Carter. They are just flat-out wrong."

Posted by Maxine Clarke on January 18, 2007
Categories: Policy and Public | Permalink | Comments (0)