Greg Henry's "Renewing Research"

Some great commentary on working toward a smarter research culture: "Renewing Research," by Greg Henry.

Generally, he's reminding you to do the right thing because it's the right thing to do, whether you're doing research or running the free world. Huge appreciation of his liberal arts-style editorializing in the medical literature.

Here's a link.

For those involved with emergency medicine, there are a lot of strong, provocative articles linked from the parent website.

Spin in medical literature, a cohort study

Hey, all,

A cool little study published in PLoS Medicine linked here.

Essentially, it's a "retrospective cohort study" looking at factors influencing relative hyperbole, or "spin", that appears in the news media following the publication of new medical science (specifically, randomized controlled trials). The authors conclude that, most commonly, spin creeps into the news when study authors include it in press releases. Ultimately, it suggests both that press releases need to be done responsibly and that the news media rarely reads or digests our newly published scientific literature!

I'll admit that, when overloaded with things to read and process with limited time, I occasionally take the easy route, skip past my assessment of medical literature, and begin with the conclusions. I think we all do.

There's clearly a problem if we're expecting outsider-types to digest our literary canon to separate our trashes from our treasures. They don't have the background in epidemiology/biostatistics/whatever scientific field we're publishing from to do so. Ultimately, even if they did, it isn't in the press' interest to restrict hyperbole.

So it's agreed: responsible, accurate press releases from now on. Good.

Open Science Competition

This is a pretty awesome:  Genspace and Assay Depot are holding a competition in the tri-state area of NY, NJ, and Connecticut looking for the best amateur innovators and researchers with cash prizes for receiving top marks.  This article does an excellent job of describing all the basics behind it. 

What would be great is the ability to have a much wider dispersion of these sorts of competitions.  As much as anyone may like to tinker or experiment, having the incentive of cash to really throw some results to the greater public is a perfect theater for open science to grow.  These competitions also would provide an excellent means of getting these amateur scientists to meet and possibly collaborate, putting a face to to the facebook of open science, perhaps.

Open Science Startups and Supercomputers

Seems like everyone is figuring out the shtick of open science can be a highly desired enterprise:  Mendeley, a London-based startup, acts as a Wikipedia of open science and has really exploded in terms of its monthly traffic.  Check out Mendeley's site here to learn more.

Not only that, more and more investments into collaborative science are being made with hefty investments.  The National Energy Research Scientific Computer Center (NERSC) signed a $40 million supercomputer agreement with Cray Cascade System with a specific aim of advancing open science efforts. 

So here we have examples of how there are very lucrative means of engaging open science as well as sites available to really get involved, not to mention innumerable other groups like Mendeley.  Seems like some things are going in a very positive direction.

Open-Access UK

In an unprecedented move toward open-access, the British government unveils plans to make all tax-payer funded research available free to readers by 2014. Controversial? Yes. Necessary? Absolutely.

Read the complete article here.

Can we expect a similar transition in the US?

Call your congressman!

Sequestered Data Hinders Scientific Process

Apologies for the lengthy sabbatical, open science news has been abounds.  Recently large companies with monstrous data banks of (occasionally personal) information have been working with a select number of researchers to publish articles, but refuse to share such banks with other researchers for any verification or scrutiny.

"It’s antithetical to the basic norms of science to make claims that cannot be validated because the necessary data are proprietary." - Michael Eisen

Check out the article here.

 

Harvard slams the publishing industry racket

For those who haven't participated in scientific publishing directly, I'll describe it briefly:

A scientist, potentially funded by your tax dollars, has research he wants to publish. He writes a manuscript using data he's accumulated using this funding. That manuscript is submitted to a scientific journal (like Nature or JAMA) and undergoes a peer-review process of some sort (which may or may not be free for the author). Let's assume that manuscript is accepted for publication by the journal. The journal "publishes" the manuscript, at which point it is included in print and online versions. The manuscript can be accessed through a direct subscription to the journal or to a publishing house like Elsevier. These subscriptions are very expensive.

So the scientist pays to provide content and the reader pays to view it. What exactly does the publisher do?

This isn't meant to be exhaustive (I wrote about it a bit more here), but one definitely feels a little icky thinking about where all that money goes.

In today's Guardian, Harvard University notes that it can no longer keep up with the costs of maintaining a comprehensive database of journals. In real terms, this means Harvard students/faculty/physicians don't have access to all new information. If Harvard, with its multi-billion dollar endowment, can't keep up with rising costs, there's no doubt this system is in trouble.

We at OSK are glad to see Harvard is thinking progressively. We're disappointed it's only doing so for financial reasons. Such is life, I suppose.