Newsletter 16 March 2012: scientific journal favours pseudo-science

YOU don’t have to be psychic to share my delight at the publication of some ‘negative’ scientific results this week in PLoS One, the free-access online journal.There remains a bit of a stigma around so-called negative results, but as my old professor regularly reminded me, the knowledge of what doesn’t work is every bit as valuable as the knowledge of what does. This particular paper is worth mentioning for a couple of reasons: it was refused publication in the (conventional) journal which published the findings it overturns, and it demonstrates the growing power of online publishing over the entrenched journal publishers.

The fact that it also takes a scientific approach to a topic many consider to be pseudo-science is just a bonus.

The issue in question is precognition – whether it is possible to have knowledge of an event before it happens. Last year the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology (JPSP) published a paper by social psychologist Daryl Bem, which appeared to show scientific evidence for the phenomenon.

Naturally, many were sceptical – and some set about to reproduce the experiments described. Among those were a team consisting of Chris French (Goldsmiths, University of London), Stuart Ritchie (University of Edinburgh), and Richard Wiseman (University of Hertfordshire), who replicated Bem’s final experiment. Surprise surprise, they found no evidence for precognition.

What was surprising was that JPSP refused to publish the findings – despite the fact that the original research had included a request for others to attempt to replicate the findings. The journal, apparently, has a policy of not publishing replications, despite reproducibility being the cornerstone of the scientific method.

Kudos, then, to PLoS One, which has published the findings and made them freely available on the web (http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0033423)

The story also addresses the wider issue of publication of negative results. We know anecdotally that many researchers are reluctant to write-up and submit negative findings, and that journals are unenthusiastic about publishing them, as if the discovery of knowledge was some sort of failure.

That is, I think, wrong-headed, and gazing into my crystal ball I foresee a day when all that changes.

I hope you find the LabHomepage website, and this weekly newsletter, useful. Comments and feedback are always welcome: thesecretlabproject@gmail.com. If you have a friend or colleague you think might be interested, please feel free to forward it or (even better) encourage them to sign up for their own copy at http://eepurl.com/itOV2best wishes

Russ Swan, editor, LabHomepage.com

This week’s top stories: 16 March 2012

1. Mass spectrometer is workhorse for routine operations
THE BEST-selling LC/MS/MS in history is how AB Sciex describes its API 4000, and so creating a replacement instrument is clearly not something to be undertaken lightly. The new 4500…
http://labhomepage.com/1135/mass-spectrometry/mass-spectrometer-is-workhorse-for-routine-operations/

2. Pulseless pumping proves vital for water contamination testing
AN AREA of growing interest for water suppliers is the removal of pesticides and other potentially harmful micropollutants from water being treated, but this presents an unusual challenge in the laboratory…
http://labhomepage.com/1184/pump/pulseless-pumping-proves-vital-for-water-contamination-testing/

3. Compact microplate sealer handles all types and sizes
SEALING microplates is an important but routine laboratory task, usually done through the use of a microplate sealer. Porvair Sciences’s new MiniSeal Plus heat sealer requires only a supply of…
http://labhomepage.com/1179/labware/compact-microplate-sealer-handles-all-types-and-sizes/

4. You’ve heard of table dancing…?
NOVEL versions of the periodic table are everywhere these days, with Mendeleev’s grid being used to classify everything from social networks to bloggers, to comic books, and even…
http://labhomepage.com/1040/trivia/youve-heard-of-table-dancing/

5. Bromodomains and profiling kits to boost drug discovery
AMSBIO says that bromodomains – protein domains containing about 110 amino acid units – are emerging as a new class of target for drug discovery research, alongside…
http://labhomepage.com/1175/uncategorized/bromodomains-and-profiling-kits-to-boost-drug-discovery/

6. Sequencing the genome of antibiotic-resistant bacteria
A REPORT this week from Madrid recounts the novel use of the latest genomic sequencing system to unravel some of the secrets of new strains of the bacterium of Klebsiella pneunomiae. Researchers at…
http://labhomepage.com/1163/genomics/sequencing-the-genome-of-antibiotic-resistant-bacteria/

7. Transfection-free labelling for direct organelle visualisation
AN EASY method of labelling cellular structures without transfection agents is now available from Amsbio. The company says its lentiviral particles allow the direct visualisation of organelles and…
http://labhomepage.com/1158/stem-cell/transfection-free-labelling-for-direct-organelle-visualisation/

8. More efficient collagen coating of plates and flasks
A REGULAR but tedious task in many laboratories is the coating of disposable items of labware with extracellular matrix proteins such as collagen or fibronectin before performing cell culture….
http://labhomepage.com/1153/methods-and-protocols/more-efficient-collagen-coating-of-plates-and-flasks/

9. Flow calorimetry from tiny samples for rapid enzyme screening
A LOW-COST flow calorimeter which characterises enzymes in just a few minutes, using samples measured in microlitres, is now available from TTP LabTech. ChipCal takes only …
http://labhomepage.com/1129/calorimeter/flow-calorimetry-from-tiny-samples-for-rapid-enzyme-screening/

10. Microarrrays target key cancer predictors
THE FIRST in a new line of cancer research microarrays from Oxford Gene Technology (OGT) promises confident detection of copy number variation (CNV) and loss of heterozygosity…
http://labhomepage.com/1124/diagnostic/microarrrays-target-key-cancer-predictors/

2 comments for “Newsletter 16 March 2012: scientific journal favours pseudo-science

  1. 19 March 2012 at 09:54

    Only two minor comments:

    Precognition cannot exist because, as remarked by Nobel laureate Ilya Prigogine, future does not exist. The mind is subject to physical/chemical/biological laws, as any other form of matter in this Universe.

    PLoS ONE has not made the findings freely available on the web. Open access is provided by sponsors and by the own authors who pay an high fee ($1350 per article for PLoS ONE): see http://www.plos.org/publish/pricing-policy/publication-fees/

  2. 1 April 2012 at 18:20

    I am thinking of the most famous failure of an experiment: looking for the ether: Michaelson Morley.

    Is precognition like counterfactual experiments?–assuming results about experiments that have not been performed. These are often used in quantum mechanics, like Bell’s theorem. It seems to me that counterfactual experiments fall into the same category as precognition. So this begs the question, should we use counterfactual experiments to “explain” Nature?

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