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Tag Archives: scientific publishing
Poonam Pandey and peer-review
One dubious but vigorous narrative that has emerged around Poonam Pandey’s “death” and subsequent return to life is that the mainstream media will publish “anything”. To be sure, there were broadly two kinds of news reports after the post appeared … Continue reading
The identity of scientific papers
This prompt arose in response to Stuart Ritchie’s response to a suggestion in an editorial “first published last year but currently getting some attention on Twitter” – that scientists should write their scientific papers as if they were telling a … Continue reading
Posted in Scicomm, Science
Tagged IMRaD structure, knowledge production, preprint papers, replication crisis, science journalism, scientific papers, scientific publishing, storytelling
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The paradoxical virtues of primacy in science
Primacy is a false virtue imposed by the structures of modern science – yet it is also necessary to right some wrongs. Continue reading
Posted in Analysis, Science
Tagged attribution, Bibhas De, citation, Enrico Fermi, history of science, Knabenphysik, Meghnad Saha, Nobel Prizes, primacy, scientific journals, scientific literature, scientific publishing
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The toxic affair between Covaxin and The Lancet
That Covaxin has been leading a ceaselessly beleaguered life is no mystery – but The Lancet journal may not know that it has been pressed into the questionable service of saving the vaccine’s reputation on at least three occasions. In … Continue reading
Posted in Analysis, Science
Tagged Bharat Biotech, clinical trials, Covaxin, JAMA, New England Journal of Medicine, retraction index, scientific publishing, The Lancet
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PeerJ’s peer-review problem
Of all the scientific journals in the wild, there are a few I keep a closer eye on: they publish interesting results but more importantly they have been forward-thinking on matters of scientific publishing and they’ve also displayed a tendency … Continue reading
Posted in Science
Tagged glamour journals, negative results, peer review, PeerJ, preprint papers, scientific publishing, sound science
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Bharat Biotech gets 1/10 for tweet
If I had been Bharat Biotech’s teacher and “Where is your data?” had been an examination question, Bharat Biotech would have received 1 out of 10 marks. The correct answer to where is your data can take one of two … Continue reading
A non-self-correcting science
While I’m all for a bit of triumphalism when some component of conventional publication vis-à-vis scientific research – like pre-publication anonymous peer review – fails, and fails publicly, I spotted an article in The Conversation earlier today that I thought … Continue reading
Citations and media coverage
According to a press release accompanying a just-published study in PLOS ONE: Highly cited papers also tend to receive more media attention, although the cause of the association is unclear. One reason I can think of is a confounding factor … Continue reading
Posted in Science
Tagged citations, Open Access, paywall, PLoS ONE, positivity bias, preprints, scientific publishing
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The costs of correction
I was slightly disappointed to read a report in the New York Times this morning. Entitled ‘Two Huge COVID-19 Studies Are Retracted After Scientists Sound Alarms’, it discussed the implications of two large studies of COVID-19 recently being retracted by … Continue reading