Once every four years, the worlds of journals and meta-researchers come together for a conference about the science of science publishing. This month, it was on, in Chicago, and I live-blogged each day:
1. Bias, Conflicts, Spin: The 8th Olympiad of Research on Science and Publishing Begins
2. Good Enough? Editors, Statistics, and Grant Peer Review
3. Innovations in Peer Review and Scientific Publishing
The day before, I participated in a panel at a half-day workshop on "predatory" journals. On the last day, my colleague Melissa Vaught presented some of the work she, Diana Jordan, and I have done evaluating who comments on PubMed Commons. You can read our abstract here.
And then I was off for vacation for a few weeks...
Bias in Open Science Advocacy: The Case of Article Badges for Data Sharing. A look at a much-hyped "simple" solution to wicked problems in science - with a long comment string of debate with authors, advocates, and others. And a comment at PubMed Commons. And then a follow-up post, with a plot twist! There's another study of that journal's practices: What's Open, What's Data? What's Proof, What's Spin?
If Voltaire tweeted! An important message from the Enlightenment. Meme-ified 1763 added to my old little post on absence of evidence and deductive reasoning: Studies of cave paintings have shown...
A new post at Missing Scientists' Faces blog: Groundbreaking early African-American women PhDs, a scientist refugee, & more. Meet over a dozen diverse scientists and historical figures you have never heard of before!
A response from American Heart Association authors on my comment about errors and other issues with their statement on dietary fats is...surprising. I respond to the comment, with a post that's a trip into into the world of evaluating studies at Absolutely Maybe: Circling the Wagons, Science Style: AHA Saturated Biases Redux. With a reply at PubMed Commons.
Not beach reading, I guess! At Absolutely Maybe: 5 Tips for Understanding Data in Meta-Analyses.
And a look at an aspect of the past that surprised me: Why Pockets and Waves of De-Feminization in Science's Past Matter Now.
Over at Missing Scientists' Faces blog, Early African-American and hispanic biologists, a theoretical physicist & a mathematician in politics.
And new Wikipedia page on Anna Johnson Julian (1903-1994), the first African-American woman to earn a sociology PhD, civic activist, and part of a power couple - she was married to the famous chemist, Percy Lavon Julian.
Even by evidence food fight standards, the coconut oil furor this month has been heated! The American Heart Association (AHA) issued a presidential advisory, motivated by one of my main interests - conflicting meta-analyses. What they said about coconut oil got me interested. My post is at Absolutely Maybe - Saturated Biases: Where the AHA Advice on Coconut Oil Went Wrong. And I commented on PubMed Commons.
At Missing Scientists' Faces: A story nearly lost, an entomologist, a child prodigy and more.
New Wikipedia pages:
Helen Freedhoff - a Canadian theoretical physicist who studied the interaction of light with atoms and was doctoral supervisor to Schrödinger's grandson. She was Yoni Freedhoff's mother, and she died suddenly this month. Vale.
Alberta Jones Seaton - one of the first African-American women to gain a PhD in zoology, who led an adventurous life across several continents.
Jessica Ware - an African-American evolutionary biologist and entomologist who's an expert in dragonflies.
Georgia Ann Robinson - the first African-American woman police officer at the LAPD, and probably one of the first two in the US (a few weeks apart, in 1919).
Our study of editorial expressions of concern was published in Research Integrity and Peer Review, and I blogged about my reflections on problems and solutions at Absolutely Maybe: 3 Things Expressions of Concern Reveal About the Publication System.
Also on Absolutely Maybe: The Case of the Missing Neuro Drug Trials. A look at a revealing study about unpublished trials and possibly failing drugs in particular - and why April 2017 is a game changer.
"Research isn't the final word anymore": an interview with The Scope radio podcast from the University of Utah.
Speaking of not the final word... Doctors have been shown to have as much implicit racial bias as other members of their community - and that presumably plays a part in disparities in healthcare treatment and outcomes. In a new systematic review, the authors came to the conclusion that their implicit bias does not affect doctors' clinical decision making. But that conclusion is not justified by their study: I wrote about why on PubMed Commons.
On Missing Scientists' Faces, another post: Trailblazing African-American STEM women in the '40s and '50s, breaking ground today, and back to the 19th century.
New Wikipedia pages on African-American women scientists:
Hattie Scott Peterson (1913-1993), the first African-American woman to gain a civil engineering degree;
Alma Levant Hayden, a chemist, and the first African-American FDA scientist - she unmasked a major cancer treatment scam in 1963, and died young in 1967;
Harriet Marble (1885-1996), an early African-American woman pharmacist, who became a very successful businesswoman in Kentucky, and served as vice-president of the African-American National Medical Association.
This montage is Alma Hayden (left) and Hattie Peterson:
