Positive Results Can Be Negative
13/09/11 14:22 Filed in: GenomeWeb Daily Scan
Submitted by S. Pelech - Kinexus on Tue, 09/13/2011 - 14:22.
With the rapid progress made in the biological sciences with improved tools and techniques over the last few decades, it is not surprising that our knowledge about the world is becoming increasingly extensive. Presumably, this leads to improved understanding about the true nature of biological processes and fewer false directions or hypotheses.
Despite the proliferation of scientific journals, the bar for publication has probably increased with the availability of much more powerful investigative technologies. This generates a lot more data, and improved prospects for positive results.
It is a requirement for publication in most scientific journals that the submitted work is novel and not primarily confirmatory. Nevertheless, it is striking that with around 23,000 proteins encoded by the human genome, it appears that over 95% of the biochemistry/molecular biology publications arise from less than 5% of these proteins. It would seem likely then that there is in fact a high degree of redundancy in scientific publications and consequently a very high rate of positive results. I am less concerned about a decline in overall biomedical research than I am about its rather restricted focus at this time.
Link to the original blog post.
With the rapid progress made in the biological sciences with improved tools and techniques over the last few decades, it is not surprising that our knowledge about the world is becoming increasingly extensive. Presumably, this leads to improved understanding about the true nature of biological processes and fewer false directions or hypotheses.
Despite the proliferation of scientific journals, the bar for publication has probably increased with the availability of much more powerful investigative technologies. This generates a lot more data, and improved prospects for positive results.
It is a requirement for publication in most scientific journals that the submitted work is novel and not primarily confirmatory. Nevertheless, it is striking that with around 23,000 proteins encoded by the human genome, it appears that over 95% of the biochemistry/molecular biology publications arise from less than 5% of these proteins. It would seem likely then that there is in fact a high degree of redundancy in scientific publications and consequently a very high rate of positive results. I am less concerned about a decline in overall biomedical research than I am about its rather restricted focus at this time.
Link to the original blog post.