Tag: Peer Review

The NIH grant process is not The Godfather.

Improving how the NIH decides which grants to fund: Reality vs. conspiracy

Last week, the United States National Institutes of Health (NIH) announced a plan to decrease the problem of reputational bias in grant funding. I couldn't help but contrast how hard the NIH tries to use the most rigorous scientific criteria to decide whose grants to fund with the conspiracy theory that Anthony Fauci personally doles out NIH dollars like a mob boss...

/ December 12, 2022
SARS-CoV-2

Peer review fail: Vaccine publishes antivax propaganda disguised as “reanalyses” of Pfizer and Moderna COVID-19 vaccine clinical trial data

In order portray COVID-19 vaccines as dangerous, Peter Doshi has now managed to get poorly designed and performed "reanalyses" of the clinical trial data used by the FDA to grant emergency use approval of the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines published in two reputable journals, The BMJ and Vaccine? What happened?

/ September 5, 2022

Nepotistic Journals

Research identifies another potential bias in scientific publishing - nepotistic journals.

/ November 24, 2021

Update on ASEA, Protandim, and dōTERRA

Multilevel marketing distributors of dietary supplements and essential oils point to studies that they think constitute evidence that their products work. They don't understand why those studies are inadequate.

/ November 7, 2017

Faking Peer-Review

A major cancer journal just retracted 107 papers for faking peer-review, bringing the total for that publisher to 450. How did this happen, and how do we prevent it in the future?

/ April 26, 2017

Is scientific peer review a “sacred cow” ready to be slaughtered?

I’ve frequently noted that one of the things most detested by quacks and promoters of pseudoscience is peer review. Creationists hate peer review. HIV/AIDS denialists hate it. Anti-vaccine cranks like those at Age of Autism hate it. Indeed, as a friend of mine, Mark Hoofnagle, pointed out several years ago, pseudoscientists and cranks of all stripes hate it. There’s a reason for...

/ December 21, 2015

Open vs Blinded Peer-Review

The overall goal of science-based medicine is to maintain and improve the standard of science in the practice of medicine at every level. At the heart of the scientific basis of medical knowledge and practice is a process known as peer-review. We have occasionally written about peer-review on SBM, and once again the process is under the microscope over a specific question...

/ September 30, 2015

Caution vs Alarmism

When I lecture about the need for science-based medicine (SBM), I have to pause about half-way through my list of all the things wrong with the current practice of medical science, and I balance my discussion by emphasizing what I am not saying: I am not saying that medical science is completely broken. It is just really challenging, we need to raise...

/ July 1, 2015

Bad Science Journals

It’s an excellent business model. The only real infrastructure you need is a website, and you can have a custom site made for $5-10 thousand. Then you just have the monthly bandwidth charges. The rest is just e-marketing, which can be done for free, or the cost of some e-mails lists. After that, the money just comes rolling in. The best part...

/ August 27, 2014

Systematic Review claims acupuncture as effective as antidepressants: Part 1: Checking the past literature

A recent systematic review in PLOS One raised the question whether acupuncture and other alternative therapies are as effective as antidepressants and psychotherapy for depression. The authors concluded  differences were not seen with psychotherapy compared to antidepressants, alternative therapies [and notably acupuncture] or active intervention controls or put it differently, antidepressants alone and psychotherapy alone are not significantly different from alternative therapies...

/ January 18, 2013