I think that the idea of getting jourals to demand a minimum standard of data presentation is a very good one, and could be implemented with relative ease - the Flow community would have to address the suggestions to the college of editors (the Vancouver Group) to get them to adopt the set of demands in their general rule set for manuscript writing. Demanding that every (relevant) detail of experiments be written into every manuscript would increase the volume of publication, and would not necessarily increase the quality. Instead, perhaps one could refer to a rule set, that has been followed. This is the solution clinicians in allergy and pulmonary diseases have, where one can refer to diagnosis criteria that have been followed. One or two articles that describe the minimum set of standards for data presentations could be published in Cytometry or Clinical Communications in Cytometry. Reference to these articles, and statement of adherence to the principles advocated in them, should set non-flow reviewers and our distinguished flow users group at relative ease. The authors of the articles could include respondents in this discussion (if they contributed to the manuscript - details as to how to decide on authorshp can be found in the Vancouver Recommendations). Setting mimimun standards would open a can of worms, though - as the same arguments that MR and others have voiced over bad flow data presentation can without doubt be said about Western Blots, ELISAs, PCR and other genera of more or less qualitative experimental data. This might be the first step toward a significantly improved scientific literature. Hans Jürgen Hoffmann -----Original Message----- From: Roederer, Mario (VRC) [mailto:MarioR@mail.nih.gov] Sent: 16. oktober 2001 19:00 To: cyto-inbox Subject: Bad Flow Data & reviewing -- What can we do? This topic strikes a nerve with many of us. Indeed, ISAC did at one point have the decent notion to have a committee on "data presentation standards" or something like that. I remember seeing something at Montpellier--a pamphlet on presentation, I think. Since then, I haven't heard about the progress of this committee. I made a number of suggestions on the committee's effort, as it was a reasonable start, but don't know if that had any affect. Indeed, even this pamphlet had a number of mistaken notions, showing how ingrained things can get even within the community.
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