I wasn’t surprised to see my remark about Nature and Science contested but I was surprised to see who did the contesting, because what I see as the faults of these journals are exactly the sort of faults that you often criticize in your books. They both publish a lot of work that is fashionable and apparently exciting, but they don’t insist on including the supporting information that allows readers to know exactly how the experiments were done — half the time they wouldn’t even allow authors to include this information because they would say it made the article too long. What happens in practice, therefore, is that high-profile authors will publish a claim-staking exercise in Nature or Science and then, if you are lucky, follow it up later in a journal of lower prestige with a “full paper” that includes the essential details omitted the first time round.
Or so it seems. There is much more to read here, especially if you want to learn how big big organizations can be fucked by crappy powerpoint. And: it wasn’t the scientists that noone listened to — they messed up in telling the message so it could be understood.
So true. I observed several sensational papers in Nature and Science which appeared to be completely wrong just few years later. It become increasingly easy to make big (and not really confirmed) claims in those journals, of couse only for some priviliged people. However it is almost impossible to publish any comment which cast doubts on those claims and if these claims are retracted (not so aften) it is done very low tone, so low that most of people are not aware of retractions for several more years. In most of cases the claim is not at all retracted, just…it is not reproducible for unknown reasons by anyone after. Who cares if people published those claims already got their grants, promotions, chairs and departments.
Science is business for too many scientists and what is the most inportant in business? Profit taking…oh God…