Nobel Prize Winner stirs the pot, science needs to archive data, and more!

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Randy Scheckman (on top journals, the impact factor & open access), disappearing data, 23andMe craziness, and more…all in this edition of Blog Buzz!

  • Nature News writes about a recent study which showed the rapid loss of original scientific data over time, yikes! A more in depth discussion of this important issue in an item from Scientific American.
  • A recent study looked at the rate of publication (and time lag) following the presentation of abstracts at conferences in Medical Education, Publication results of abstracts presented at medical education conferences…from JAMA.
  • Randy Scheckman, newly awarded the Nobel prize, made a big splash writting that big name journals and the highly flawed impact factor are distorting science and that his lab will avoid pubishing in big name journals going forward. You can read his argument in the Guardian.
  • Then head over to Retraction Watch for an interesting discussion comparing the record of retractions during Schekamn’s tenure at PNAS with those at the “luxury journals” he called to task. Retraction Watch mentions that the move may punish junior members of his lab, that Schekman has a record  of high profile publications, and questions whether OA really does guarantee higher quality as the op-ed implied, but agrees that the science community needs to discuss the impact factor and ultimately that institutions have a role to play by rewarding works based on their merits and not the journal they were published in.The post links to a statement from the editor of Nature about metrics and the comments are worth a read as well.
  • Also, Scheckman took the discussion to reddit and answered questions in an Ask Me Anything (which you have to admit is pretty cool). He also responded to some criticisms in The Conversation.
  • By now you’ve probably heard about the craziness between 23andme and the FDA, here are a few posts that offered perspectives on the situation as it unfolded; Leila Jamal at the Berman Bioethics Institute asked What do we gain or loose by regulating 23and Me? Matthew Herper thought the company was being sloppy, John Willbanks weighs in,  Ezra Klein at the WaPo pointed out  how old and irrelevant some regulations of medical devices are.