Re: Bad flow cytometry papers needed

From: Mario Roederer (roederer@drmr.com)
Date: Fri Oct 12 2001 - 20:27:17 EST


Claudio:

nearly every paper in the literature qualifies here...  excepting
those written by people on this list, of course.  Some years ago I
was teaching the flow course at Stanford and did exactly the same
thing.  I went to the most recent issue of Nature Medicine, found the
very first article that used FACS, and gave it out.  Turns out it had
nearly everything one could want from a paper.  I told the students I
would collect all of their comments and send it to the author by
EMail.  I did so, with the preface that this was not meant to be a
criticism of the science, but merely to point out that the FACS work
was awful and misinterpreted.  The author took it in stride, saying
first "that it was unusual to receive criticism so soon after
publication", but told me that the comments would be taken in the
spirit in which they were intended.  Boy, I bet a postdoc or two was
roasted that night.

Anyway, the challenge to your students should be to find a paper that
doesn't have flaws in its FACS analysis.

mr

At 4:40 PM +0200 10/12/01, Claudio Vallan wrote:
>Dear Flowers,
>
>I think part of the cytometry teaching would be easier if instead of
>telling the students what they should do I would tell them what they should
>not do. (For some strange reason people tend to keep this better in mind)
>Unfortunately I have not many real life examples to show them. So I wonder
>if somebody knows some papers which I could put as bad examples. (wrong
>statistics, wrong compensation, wrong dies, misinterpreted data, wrong
>controls  etc. etc.)
>
>It is very difficult making a Medline search using those terms :-)
>
>It would be great if I had some examples of mistakes that my students would
>not anymore need to do themselves.
>
>(Do not hesitate to mention your own papers as this may also be a way to
>increase your citation index :-) )
>
>Perhaps you should send the references to me directly, so nobody will get
>too annoyed
>
>
>Thank you in advance
>
>Claudio
>
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