Pressure to publish may bias scientists

This is a well-known process but it is nice to see it convincingly documented. It does help explain the heap of epidemiological garbage that keeps pouring out. A much more extensive treatment of the subject here

The qual­ity of sci­en­tif­ic re­search may be suf­fer­ing be­cause scholars are un­der pres­sure to get their work pub­lished in scientif­ic jour­nals, a new anal­y­sis sug­gests.

The study found that the frac­tion of U.S.-pub­lished re­search papers claim­ing “pos­i­tive” re­sults—those that may in­di­cate an actu­al dis­cov­ery—is im­mensely high­er when the au­thors are from states whose aca­demics pub­lish more of­ten. The dif­fer­ence ranged from less than half, to over 95 per­cent.

The find­ings were re­ported in the on­line re­search jour­nal PLoS One on April 21, by Dan­iele Fan­elli of the Uni­vers­ity of Ed­in­burgh in Scot­land.

“Pub­lish or per­ish,” an aphor­ism widely known in ac­a­dem­ia, ex­presses the very real fact that sci­en­tists must pub­lish their work con­tin­u­ously to se­cure jobs and fund­ing, Fan­elli not­ed. Ca­reers are judged based on the sheer num­ber of pa­pers some­one has pub­lished, and on how many times these are cit­ed in lat­er pa­pers—though this is a hotly de­bat­ed meas­ure of sci­en­tif­ic qual­ity.

But pa­pers are more or less likely to be ac­cept­ed by jour­nals, and to be cit­ed, de­pend­ing on the re­sults they re­port. Like a hit song, more in­ter­est­ing re­sults tend to make fur­ther head­way. Thus sci­en­tists are “torn be­tween the need to be ac­cu­rate and objective and the need to keep their ca­reers alive,” Fan­elli said.

Fanelli an­a­lysed over 1,300 pa­pers claim­ing to have tested a hypoth­e­sis in all dis­ciplines, from phys­ics to so­ci­ol­o­gy, from U.S.-based main au­thors. Us­ing da­ta from the National Sci­ence Founda­t­ion, he then checked wheth­er the pa­pers’ con­clu­sions were linked to the states’ pro­duc­ti­vity, meas­ured by the num­ber of pa­pers pub­lished on average by each ac­a­dem­ic.

Re­sults were more likely to “sup­port” the hy­poth­e­sis un­der investi­ga­t­ion, Fan­elli found, when the pa­per was from a “productive” state. That sug­gests, he said, that sci­en­tists working in more com­pet­i­tive and pro­duc­tive en­vi­ron­ments are more likely to make their re­sults look pos­i­tive. It’s un­clear wheth­er they do this by writ­ing the pa­pers dif­fer­ently or by tweak­ing the un­der­ly­ing da­ta, Fan­elli said.

“The out­come of an ex­pe­ri­ment de­pends on many fac­tors, but the pro­duc­ti­vity of the U.S. state of the re­searcher should not, in the­o­ry, be one of them,” ex­plained Fan­elli. “We can­not ex­clude that re­search­ers in the more pro­duc­tive states are smarter and bet­ter equipped, and thus more suc­cess­ful, but this is un­likely to fully ex­plain the marked trend ob­served.” The study re­sults were in­de­pend­ent of fund­ing avail­abil­ity, he said.

Pos­i­tive re­sults were less than half the to­tal in Ne­vada, North Da­ko­ta and Mis­sis­sip­pi. At the oth­er ex­treme, states in­clud­ing Mich­i­gan, Ohio, Dis­trict of Co­lum­bia and Ne­bras­ka had be­tween 95 per­cent and 100 per­cent pos­i­tive re­sults, a rate that seems unrealistic even for the most out­stand­ing in­sti­tu­tions, Fan­elli said.

These con­clu­sions could apply to all sci­en­tif­ic­ally ad­vanced countries, he added. “Aca­demic com­pe­ti­tion for fund­ing and positions is in­creas­ing ev­ery­where,” said Fan­elli. “Poli­cies that rely too much on cold meas­ures of pro­duc­ti­vity might be low­er­ing the qual­ity of sci­ence it­self.”

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Addicted smokers at mercy of their genes, find scientists

This does raise the theoretical possibility that the lung cancer is the result of the genes rather than of the smoking. That would however be discounted if smokers without the risk genes also had high rates of cancer. We should not forget that many smokers live into advanced old age

NEW research suggests smokers who find it hard to cut down or quit may be at the mercy of their genes.

Scientists have identified three genetic mutations that increase the number of cigarettes people smoke a day.

Several also appear to be associated with taking up smoking and one with smoking cessation.

Some of the findings will now be incorporated into risk factor DNA tests developed by the Icelandic company deCODE, which took part in the research.

A previous study two years ago found a common change in the genetic code linked to nicotine addiction and lung cancer risk.

The new research, which combined data on more than 140 thousand individuals, confirmed this discovery, and pinpointed two more genetic variants that seem to increase cigarette consumption among smokers.

Results from the three studies have been published today in the journal Nature Genetics.

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