A scientific colleague of mine who previously was in the flow field
commented on Mario's response for Bad scientific papers. It is worthy
of some discussion on the flow network as it goes to the heart of the
matter.
"Judging by my experience, I would say part of the blame goes to the
flow community and their inability to provide a decent peer review. I
remember looking forward to having some of my papers critically reviewed
because there were certain suppositions I was not sure about...but all I
got were suggestions about wording. And, of course, there was that
classical reviewer for Cancer Research who claimed that flow cytometry
was not a legitimate approach for measuring cell cycle. Kind of hard
to ensure quality when the profession doesn't have enough expertise to
police itself. "
Robert M. Zucker, PhD
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
MD 72
National Health and Environmental Effects Research Laboratory
Research Triangle Park, North Carolina, 27711
Tel: 919-541-1585; fax 919-541-4017
e-mail: zucker.robert@epa.gov
Mario
Roederer To: Cytometry Mailing List
<roederer@drm <cytometry@flowcyt.cyto.purdue.edu>
r.com> cc:
Subject: Re: Bad flow cytometry papers
needed
10/12/01
09:27 PM
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
===================================================
Claudio Vallan PhD Phone Lab: 031 /
632 88 76
FACS-LAB DKF Phone Office: 031 / 632
99 68
University of Bern E-Mail:
vallan@dkf7.unibe.ch
c/o Institute of Pathology
Murtenstrasse 31 Insel hosptial area only:
3010 Bern Beeper: 181
67 59
Switzerland
===================================================
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