Ann Atzberger wrote- >if the "odd" scientist can get inappropriate data published; then >personally I believe that is his God given right. Well, we (the flow community) know there is a lot of bad flow in a lot of good journals, and Mario intimated that flow might not be the only technical area in which there are problems. I am not well versed in the details of gel electrophoresis, the blots in various directions of the compass, and gene arrays, to name a few, but there certainly is a lot of data acquired using those technologies in the current literature. Does anybody in our gang know any gel curmudgeons, blot curmudgeons, and/or array curmudgeons (maybe arrays are too new for there to be any of these) who rant about how crappy the gel, blot, and array data are in the published literature? Is bad flow just the tip of the iceberg? (I haven't mentioned confocal because I know there are confocal curmudgeons, at least some of whom are readers of the Cytometry Mailing List). Let's face it. A paper is reviewed by two or three people, and they can't know everything about everything. And, these days, it's very unlikely that a paper with ten or more authors will include data obtained using only one or two of the methods mentioned above. I have to admit that I am a benign reviewer, and I tend to give authors the benefit of the doubt about a lot of their data, and even to refrain from complaining about flow data displayed in a manner that I don't think is up to my highest standard. When I function as an editor or associate editor, I try to send a paper I will review to somebody else who is likely to know the details in areas where I feel least secure, so that, between us, we cover as many bases as possible. But we'd need a half-dozen reviewers to make sure that all the data passed muster, and I don't see that happening. Most of the time, the bad flow data doesn't invalidate the principal conclusion(s) of a paper. When it does, the best way to deal with it is to produce another paper using good flow data to reach the right conclusion. And the same is true for all of the other technologies. When somebody publishes conclusions that are unjustified or flat out wrong, setting the record straight isn't defamation or libel, and the repercussions may be just what is needed to get people to pay more attention to their data. And an aside - if we agree that people shouldn't label axes "FL1", "FL2", etc., isn't it about time we got them to substitute "flow cytometry data" for "FACS data"? All FACSes are flow cytometers, but not all flow cytometers are FACSes...and some FACSes, such as FACScans and FACSCounts, aren't even Fluorescence Activated Cell Sorters. -Howard
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Wed Apr 03 2002 - 11:58:01 EST