Blog Comments

Kinetica Online is pleased to provide direct links to commentaries from our senior editor Dr. Steven Pelech has posted on other blogs sites. Most of these comments appear on the GenomeWeb Daily Scan website, which in turn highlight interesting blogs that have been posted at numerous sites in the blogosphere since the beginning of 2010. A wide variety of topical subjects are covered ranging from the latest scientific breakthroughs, research trends, politics and career advice. The original blogs and Dr. Pelech’s comments are summarized here under the title of the original blog. Should viewers wish to add to these discussions, they should add their comments at the original blog sites.

The views expressed by Dr. Pelech do not necessarily reflect those of the other management and staff at Kinexus Bioinformatics Corporation. However, we wish to encourage healthy debate that might spur improvements in how biomedical research is supported and conducted.

Negative Data

Turn 'Oops' into 'Oooh'

Ivan Oransky at Nature Retraction Watch notes that while positive publication bias is problematic phenomena, researchers should also recognize the value of having negative results in scientific publications. S. Pelech comments that negative results can arise from the testing of hypotheses that turn out to be incorrect and/or because there are problems with the methodologies used to test the hypotheses. If the methodologies are sound and properly executed, the resulting data remains invaluable, even if they do not support the original hypothesis. He notes that probably more than 90% of the scientific data that are generated by scientists are never published. Read More...