http://www.researchamerica.org/app/webroot/blog/?tag=sherry-glied

In the NY Times piece, there was an interesting comment after mine from Jonathan Katz, a physicist at Washington University. (link: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/23/business/media/22askthetimes.html?pagewanted=7&_r=1&hp) The arxiv.org model seems like a good one for making results available quicker, if journals would be amenable to “scooping” the results of the data. I would take it a step further and say that peer review itself could and should transition to a more open model that takes advantage of technology. Real-time peer review could happen within a community of commenters, much like this blog we are writing on.

Other possibilities are author or institutional support for peer review, such as in the Public Library of Science journals, and clinical trial registry databases being extended to include study results as soon as they are available. The latter concept has the added advantage of linking planned analyses to what was actually done, providing a build-in check of scientific rigor.

In short, I think we can do better, without throwing out the mandate for peer review.

Sometimes this is called publication bias. The Journal of Articles in Support of the Null Hypothesis (JOSH) was founded to address a scientific publishing bias against such articles. More information is available at:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statistical_hypothesis_testing

I used to share Diana’s frustration about the unavailability of science journals (and data). I’d hesitate to recommend radical changes to the system. The current mix seems to work. In some cases scientists self-publish. Many authors post copies of publications on their own university or personal websites.

The system may not be entirely broken. Particularly, the peer review process supported by journals is extremely valuable to improve methods and reduce mistake. Editors have prevented me from publishing things, that did in fact need better editing and rewriting. So, if journals require subscriptions to function. I think it is better to keep the quality higher than to rush the move towards open access format.

I have been thinking about the changes with the Obama administration and I am involved with the Health Policy Committee; but do not deal with any issues relative to international aid. I would say that considering his foreign policy statements, particularly as they relate to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, one would assume that he’s going to want to use IA as a means to repair some of the ill will towards the US in that part of the world.

The week of January 12th, I’ll be hosing a small get together of all the New York City Obama Health Policy Committee Members… email me if you’d like to join us!

Ok – now more people comment!