Free Cited to Death by Meg Perry Page B

looked at me quizzically. “Didn’t you have to take stats at Oxford? Or at least Berkeley?”

    “I did at Berkeley, but that was fourteen years ago. And I didn’t at Oxford.”

    “Really?”

    “Really. Why would I? Historians don’t do double-blind studies. We just dwell on the past.”

    Pete snorted. “Funny. Okay, then. The p-value, here, is the test that's often used for statistical significance in this kind of trial. You can set the p-value at whatever you like, but in general, the smaller it is, the better. The usual p-values are either .05 or .01. If your experiment is statistically significant at p less than or equal to .01, then there's less than a 1% chance that your results were due to chance. These guys," he pointed at a number, "have used a p-value of .25. That's awfully high."

    "So their results aren't statistically significant?"
     
    "There's still a 75% chance that their results were due to their experimental manipulations, and not due to chance. But I'm surprised that they got this published, with a p-value at that level."

    "Huh." I thought for a minute. "You know, academic publishing is changing. There are a lot of second-and third-tier journals out there now that will take a paper that the top tier journals won't. I haven't looked at the specifics of this journal, whether it's even peer reviewed or not."
     
    "Then maybe you should." Pete stood up. "I'm gonna get a beer. Want one?"

    "Sure." I turned on my laptop. Pete brought me an open bottle, and we clinked our bottles together. "Here's to research."
     
    Pete laughed. "You're such a nerd."

    "Yep. Out and proud, dude."
     
    We both laughed at that. My laptop was ready, so I got online and did a search for the Journal of Stem Cell Biology. Its website appeared. I swung the laptop around so Pete could see it too.

    "The first thing to check is the publisher. And the publisher here is called..." I had to click in a couple of pages. "...Biology Journals Publishers. Okay, never heard of them, so it's not one of the big publishing houses. Let's see where they're located..." another click "...Sri Lanka. Okay, that's not a good sign. Next question, is it peer reviewed?"
     
    Pete pointed to the screen. "It says there that it is."

    "Yeah, but just because they say it doesn't make it true. I need to look at the instructions for authors." I read through those. "See, here, it doesn't say anything about the author's submitted paper going through the peer review process. Which means it's extremely likely that the peer review process doesn't happen."
     
    "Wow." Pete leaned back. "So, pretty much anyone can start their own journal now and publish anything they want?"

    "Yep." I clicked on the contents page for the current issue. "Look at this. Most of the articles are written by the same two guys in this issue. It looks to me like this is mostly a vanity publication for these guys, who happen to be the editors, with an occasional contribution from elsewhere."
     
    "So how does a journal like that get indexed in a medical database?"

    "Well, it was in an obscure database. That's why I couldn't find the full text myself. If it had been in Medline or one of the other major medical databases, I could have printed it out myself."
     
    Pete snorted softly. "And had Oliver at your doorstep even sooner than he was."

    "True." I stretched. "Okay. So. Oliver comes back from Cambridge, and he and Wray want to open a lab. The profile I read said that they got a grant to open it at first. I wonder if they're still getting grant money?"
     
    "You could find out." Pete gestured to my laptop. "Federal grants have to be listed somewhere. It might take some digging."

    "Yeah. But the grants also could be private. The newspaper story kind of implied that they were privately funded now."
     
    "Those grants might be hard to uncover. Although, if they were made from private, not-for-profit organizations, those organizations might list them."

    I mused. "You know, the first