Perhaps the single most important tenet of science is that nothing is taken for granted, and that everything can, and should, be questioned. But questioning of scientific statements can only be achieved if they are enunciated in sufficient detail that they can be evaluated rationally. As much as ever, scientists rely on short publications, such as those of Nature, to keep abreast of the literature. Space constraints in such publications, however, often force authors to reduce manuscripts to such a bare minimum that essential information is omitted, leaving novel, statements unreferenced and unexplained. This often impairs readability and comprehensibility. But even more importantly, it leaves those statements uncontestable. Almost irrefu ... read more

The future of scientific publishing is the subject of intense debate both in government, academic and industry circles these days (Nature 431, 111 (2004)). The introduction late last week of a Beta release of Google Scholar, a freely available search engine for the scientific literature, makes the issue as topical as ever –articles in non-peer-reviewed archives, such as arXiv, stand side-by-side with those in peer-reviewed journals. Is this a democratization of science under way? Or is it a loathsome drop in the standards? I make the case here that the current peer review and scientific publishing system is obsolete. Below, I explain why, review alternative systems that have emerged recently and their own problems, propose a new emergi ... read more

Lessons from Industry

Of the times I remember reading a scientific paper in depth, I think I have found errors more times than not. And this is without counting errors which are undetectable with the information available in the paper itself. Most of these errors are not easily detectable --they have come up when I have studied a paper to present at journal club, for example. I don't mean typos --the errors I am talking about include conceptual errors that make the conclusions of a paper wrong. And I don't mean papers published in unknown journals, but ones published in some of the most well-respected ones, like Nature.

Why are so many papers flawed? The increasing complexity of scientific methods calls for most contemporar ... read more