Gaming of Impact Factors: New tactic or did they just get caught?

Ben Goldacre, one of this blog's favorite journalists/authors/doctors/critics, has a fascinating new post up on his secondary blog.  We all know that a journal's impact factor is largely useless for grading the quality of an individual paper. This follows from the old idiom, that you can't judge a book by it's cover. However, impact factors are also a poor way of comparing the quality of journals themselves. For one, journals that contain many review articles have higher impact factors since reviews are cited more frequently than original research. Journals game their impact scores by publishing more review articles. Now there is evidence that editors are gaming impact scores by forcing authors to cite articles from their journals before accepting the paper! Craziness.

The evidence from a revise and resubmit letter: “The Editors would also greatly appreciate you adding more than two but fewer than six references of articles published in [the Journal involved], above all articles published over the past two years.” Even more evidence that you can't judge a book by the cover.

I would write more, but I gotta go round, so I leave it to Mr. Bo Diddley...

references:
(1) Ben Goldacre Secondary Blog - 16 January 2012
(2) F. Avanzini et al. Journal of Thrombosis and Haemostasis

Accentuate the negative

Dan has posted previously on how difficult it is for authors to get negative studies published.  Perhaps this is the real reason why the STAR*ICU study took 4+ years to make it to press.  I suspect that if the study was completed the exact same way that it was but found a benefit for barrier precautions, it would have appeared in press around 2009 or even earlier.  Just a guess.

Mike has posted at least twice on Ben Goldacre and his blog/book called Bad Science (part 1 and part 2).  Ben has a new post in the Guardian that discusses how medicine, academia and popular culture all favor positive, eye-catching and potentially spurious trial results and ignore important negative studies.  His discussion centers around a paper published last year that seemed to provide evidence of precognition - you know it before it actually happens.  That "positive" paper received tons of press, while a new negative study can't see the light of day.  I think this sort of bias plays a large role in infection prevention research - it is so much easier to publish a positive quasi-experimental study showing a benefit than a negative study.  This is why it was so great that after 4+ years of waiting the STAR*ICU study, which was a negative study, was published at the same time as the VA study, which showed a benefit.  This way, we could have a rational discussion with the positive/negative evidence receiving "almost" equal billing.

Ben Goldacre "Backwards step on looking into the future" Guardian 4/23/2011

Bad Science (part 2)

I just finished reading Ben Goldacre's book, Bad Science, and I highly recommend it. About a month ago, I posted about Dr. Goldacre, a British psychiatrist, and included his excellent, humorous video on the placebo effect. I liked it so much that I bought his book. He has an amazing ability to explain epidemiologic concepts and critical analysis to the general public. The book gives many interesting examples of problems with scientific papers and the problems with how the media translates them (often incorrectly).

Here's another video of him addressing a non-medical audience on evidence-based medicine. If only I could be this entertaining when I lecture!

Ben Goldacre Talks Bad Science from PopTech on Vimeo.

Bad Science

Yesterday, my wife forwarded me a video on the placebo effect. Since I teach that topic to the first year medical students in their epidemiology course, I felt compelled to take a look. And I discovered Ben Goldacre, a British psychiatrist, who I think could best be described as a translational epidemiologist/comedian. He writes a column in The Guardian newspaper and a blog, both entitled Bad Science, all about, well, bad science. He likes to focus on media misrepresentations of medical studies, attempts by the media to scare the public about various health issues, and the corrupting influence of pharmaceutical companies. Interestingly, his father, Michael Goldacre, is the Chair of the Department of Health Care Epidemiology at the University of Oxford.

I've added his blog to our blogroll, and embedded his placebo video below. Warning: his language is somewhat colorful.