- As an entirely independent researcher -- not receiving any research grant from any Organization in the World -- active in several fields in Medicine, including Cardiology, Neurology, Neuro-Ophthalmololgy, Neuro-Endocrinology, Endocrinology, Gastroenterology, Hepatology, Immunology particularly occult sarcoidosis with published research in these and other fields, and, a reviewer of manuscripts from several prominent medical journals, I have found that scientific letter writing has the power to remove scientific clutter from the desk of the avid researcher, remove the dross and the flotsam that necessarily accompany human efforts, demolish long-cherished assumed areas of knowledge, and bring to the forefront "that which really matters".
- I quote straight from my 1996 article in the Journal of Medical Ethics: "Critical letter writing entails the abilities to: maintain rational scepticism; refuse to conform in order to explain data; persist in keeping common-sense centre-stage; exercise logic to evaluate the biological significance of mathematical figures, including statistics; and, the ability to sustain the will to share insights regarding disease mechanisms on an ostensibly lower research platform"--see attachment.
- For almost a decade, the journal "Neurology"--AAN, refused to accept scientific correspondence in response to published articles from scientists who were not members of the AAN and thus did not directly subscribe to the journal. This was clearly written across over the relevant pages of the issues of Neurology.
- Talent is not a monopoly of advanced countries particularly the U.S.A., a land populated by immigrants of all hues and varieties. Neither is it the sole purview of the American Academy of Neurology and it voice -- the journal NEUROLOGY.
- History must record this shameful and woeful editorial journal policy, as well as our responses to it, so that the future does not see such carbuncles of bias and outright prejudice in science.
- Writers of critical Letters-to-the-Editor are a prized commodity -- the wealth of the scientific enterprise, with the ability to read between the lines -- an ability that is gifted only occasionally by Nature -- see attachments of Letters-to-the-Editor. I have published over a hundred of such pearls over the last three decades.
- The science of Medicine is too important to be left to Editors and Reviewers or to the so-called Original Researchers flush with research funds, Institutional support, and knowledge to navigate the complex business of research. The paper claiming that aspirin had anti-platelet activity and prolonged bleeding time was initially rejected -- Desforges JF. NEJM 329, 14, 1038-1039, 1993 -- the very pillar of modern cardiovascular and cerebrovascular therapeutics.
- Nothing in Medicine cannot be improved (Popper KR. Conjectures and Refutations. London: Routledge, 1978, p.47; The Logic of Scientific Discovery; Lancet 342 (8879); 1063-1064,1993). The human quest for perfection will never cease -- the imperfect human seeking the Ultimate, the paradoxical enterprise that keeps our heads high and our spirit higher, to soar where our mind is no longer shackled, the finite existence in tango with the Infinite.
Please let me know if these references/sites are useful to you:
1. Annals Peer Review Manuscript - Springer
www.springer.com/cda/.../Annals+Peer+Review+Manuscript+-+Online+First.pdf?...Cached
Apr 20, 2011 - ORIGINAL ARTICLE. Reviewing Manuscripts for Peer-Review Journals: A Primer ... submitted to behavioral medicine journals as a graduate student. Tracey A. .... Typically, papers that require “major revisions” will be sent back to one or ... institution, they should decline the invitation if they have significant ...
2. Do's and Don't's When Submitting Papers - SICB
www.sicb.org/students/Dos_and_Donts.pdfCached
…look into whether the journal has page charges or submission fees, or fees for color illustrations or photos, or ... that your paper will get an appropriate review and not something out of left field. .... Do's and Don'ts, From Kim E. Barrett, Ph.D., Professor of Medicine, University of California, ... Thus, don't waste too much time .
Dennis
Dennis Mazur
Dear Dennis:
Thank you for your response.
I am an old hat at research publication after learning the ropes over 3 decades. The matter you provided was very thoughtful.
The issue I raised was a little different. What do you do if the Editor or the reviewer is heavily biased or prejudiced, based on their interpretation of the science involved?
Vinod
Dear Vinod,
I personally would not pursue consideration of publication in the particular journal that is so biased. In many fields, it is fortunate that there are alternative journals available for a researcher to submit a paper to for consideration of publication. Major U.S medical journals, e.g., for a very low acceptance rate of acceptance of submitted articles in general. Therefore, non-acceptance is the norm for many researchers submitting to major U.S. medical journals.
Dennis
Dennis Mazur
Dear Dennis:
The issue is not the low rate of acceptance.
If the 5-10% of accepted and published articles were genuinely advancing science, there would have been nothing to decry, and science in Medicine would have been serving its express purpose of making definitive progress for humankind.
There is bias at the personal, national, and scientific levels -- a bias that is not obvious and is camouflaged so effectively that the critics of the system find little leverage.
Neurology (AAN) does not ask my services for reviewing manuscripts that are written by academicians in the United States, as it seeks to reserve its columns for those it considers worthy of occupying space in its columns, and, regards me clearly as a destructive, insurgent, anti-establishment powerful force, whereas I am the advocate for truth only and view more than 95% of medical publications worldwide as pure bunkum and nonsense. This is the disease of humankind's psychology -- something like--Be American, buy American, publish American. The British JNNP is no different, as also JAMA Neurology and many other periodicals.
Mercifully, there are many other avenues for publication in the current scenario, as you have well pointed out. Also, mercifully, there are counter-balancing intellectual influences that put the American and the European juggernauts back squarely in their place, time and again. A supercilious, mightier-and-holier-than-thou cloud has enveloped the USA, a cloud that is to its own detriment, in the terms of wasted medical and other scientific research grants / funds hemorrhaging the exechequer. More than 95% of research grants are exhausted in the pursuit of the plebian and the mundane--these are the research efforts that get published too, add to extant confusion, and halt true progress (see attached files).
"People who have conducted a good piece of research and who do not stay in academia still tend to become local or regional leaders of the profession. Why?
Partly because they have learned to speak "standing on their feet"; partly because they have acquired analytical skills; and partly because their inside
knowledge of research enables them to read between the lines of a research report" -- Lancet 342 (8879); 1063-1064, 1993.
"Trialists who devise an initial protocol must therefore ask the right question, select the correct patient, and seek answers that are still relevant when the results finally become available... the quest for statistical truth has introduced a facade of mathematical acceptability that risks drawing the clinician from reality". --see attachment.
Dennis, the risk is already there in large print, staring into the faces of those who regard published research unquestioningly as sacrosanct and unchallengeable. Most editorials that accompany such publications are again opinions expressed by a member or members of the same herd, under the same influence, and with the same scientific conviction. For humankind, conviction is all that matters--it lends a pseudo-sincerity to your publications, and, has nothing to do with the truth.
Medical publications have very successfully dissociated the truth from the conviction through several ploys, one of which is the lure of statistics.
Dennis, don't take my word for it. Read the attached files. Think and contemplate for a week before penning a quicksilver response.
Vinod
I think it reflects a conflict of interest. In addition, it represents a bias, when other conditions, different from scientific considerations, are taken on account at the moment of chosing articles for publication. Unfortunatelly, some publications, even prestigious ones, decline to accept articles because of the authors, the countries, the lack of money to pay for "edition" , (in the last case, they are probably increasing the gap between those who can pay in order to get an opportunity to publish and those who can´t) .
@ Gloria Arango-Bayer
Gloria, I must compliment you. Out of a 13+ million strength of ResearchGate, at least there is one voice that has been raised against the slippery slope of conflict of interest and insight at the level of the editorial-reviewer combine. For you especially, I leave masterful prose: "The most valuable lesson that medicine can teach us is that its creation depends upon a line of human relationships and traditions that go far back in the past. That continuity is an unbroken thread. It links cultures and peoples; it brings tolerance and understanding; it delivers hope and compassion"-- Anonymous, page xiv. Gupta VK. Adaptive Mechanisms in Migraine. Breaking the Migraine Code. Nova science Publishers Inc., New York, 2009.
The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man. G.B. Shaw (Man and Superman).
The question is a moral / ethical one. The world has become divided into countries, and the nationals of any country cheer their own sports-women and -men, not the best ones or those who ultimately win, even if they belong to other countries and races. This is just what Adolf Hitler set out to prove with the Aryan race.
The question is much deeper than a simple conflict of interest. It is a derisive pride and power of denial to an author perceived as belonging to the other side, the other race, the other country, the other religion, the other...
The other function of the editor-reviewer combine is to maintain status-quo, and, to raise the bar for originality so high for authors with strange names, like Gupta, that nothing can jump over. On the pathway to progress, Nature has placed 10,000 men against us at every crossroad -- Maurice Materlinck.
If we cannot set Medicine right, how can we ever dream to set politics right? If we cannot set politics right, how can we ever dream of justice for all?
If we all wrap and sleep it over, the issues will never change. Is it just a waste of time? Or an acceptable waste of talent? Or something more abhorrent that we cannot even conceive of yet?
It is not the money, Gloria--certainly, not the money. It is prestige, power, the ability to exclude out-of-the-club, the KKK in masquerade, the rabid racism, the ranting religion...
The need for critical letter writing will increase as the capacity of self-criticism will dwindle. Al, observation is selective; no observation is entirely objective. Bias is intrinsic to human effort. Mathematical statistics can at best partially address these issues, by converting bias into complex numbers (see attachments). With the dwindling importance of the p-values, what have we to fall back to address our bias?
The logic of mathematics is not complete. We, thus, handle our bias with an incomplete handle (Sleigh, Lancet 1993).
Science is not a particular set of techniques; it is rather a state of mind, or attitude, and the organizational conditions which allow that attitude to be expressed. -- N. Mays, C. Pope [BMJ 1995; 311: 109-112] --page 21, Chapter 4, Gupta VK (ed). Adaptive Mechanisms in Migraine. Breaking the Migraine Code. Nova Science, Inc. New York, 2009.
The state of mind extends across authors, editors, reviewers, and readers of the present and the future generations.
“qualitative research requires real skill, a combination of thought
and practice and not a little patience.” -- None of this is present in primary headache or migraine research.
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