Beware of bias in peer review (Introduction)

by xeno6696 , Sonoran Desert, Wednesday, September 16, 2009, 17:38 (5546 days ago) @ David Turell

Peer review is supposed to purify scientific publications. It is a later addition to a publication process that years ago simply had editors who made their own judgments. The following study identifies that non-neutral bias is easily identifiable among reviewers. They like positive rather than neutral or negative results. 
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> http://www.nature.com/news/2009/090914/full/news.2009.914.html-An interesting observation: Peer-review works on a positive bias... Newspapers and TV, written for an 8th grade reading level, is nearly always negative. -Interesting social commentary?-Of note here--and this is one of the issues that the math/bio group here at UNO is trying to do, is get biochemists to at least anecdotally input their biochemical failures. This way, we'll be able to computationally define the complex nature of biochemical reactions. (the system here also goes online quite a bit before Yale's.) -This is a big deal because in the two summers I spent in a biochem lab, never once did we do a write up on a failure. Which is sad when you think about it because that puts a boundary on the problem that SHOULD be shared. We need more "wikipedias" for scientists.

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\"Why is it, Master, that ascetics fight with ascetics?\"

\"It is, brahmin, because of attachment to views, adherence to views, fixation on views, addiction to views, obsession with views, holding firmly to views that ascetics fight with ascetics.\"