Comment Shaking up the medical research community (Score 1) 139
Regarding the e-biomed web site-
I can imagine that there's going to be a certain amount of FUD associated with any change in the status quo, especially for an industry as entrenched as this, but maybe it's about time to shake up the peer review system. I'm sure that there would be a certain amount of lagtime between an article getting published in, let's say, JAMA and that same article appearing on the e-biomed archive, and that lagtime should be enough to keep serious medical researchers from dumping their journal subscriptions (which they probably don't pay for out of their own pockets anyway). Don't get me wrong, peer review serves the the valuable purpose of keeping the medical archives free of the sort of uninformed rambling that the internet is so good at producing - but that's the whole point of archiving information in the first place.
And on the other hand, the peer review process is basically an antiquated institution. It assumes that the participants are all objective scientists in white ivory towers, who can be trusted to keep political issues and personal vendettas out of their medical opinions, and we all know that isn't always the case. Perhaps public opinion could function as a sort of reality check on the peer review system, especially considering that 90% of the public would be getting this information from secondary sources (i.e. news media reporting on e-biomed, as opposed to people visiting e-biomed themselves).
Just as a brief example, take a look at the medical marijuana debate. The government has been sticking its dirty little paws in to the "objective" research on marijuana for years, and they've been having a pretty easy time twisting the research into any shape they desire; perhaps if this information were more publicly available, it would be harder for advocates to politicize the research.
In any event, the important thing is to preserve the checks that the medical community already has on the peer review process that ensure its impartiality. As long as that is secure, it's hard for me to believe that the medical journals' subscription revenue outweighs the public's access to medical research. Just my two cents worth...
I can imagine that there's going to be a certain amount of FUD associated with any change in the status quo, especially for an industry as entrenched as this, but maybe it's about time to shake up the peer review system. I'm sure that there would be a certain amount of lagtime between an article getting published in, let's say, JAMA and that same article appearing on the e-biomed archive, and that lagtime should be enough to keep serious medical researchers from dumping their journal subscriptions (which they probably don't pay for out of their own pockets anyway). Don't get me wrong, peer review serves the the valuable purpose of keeping the medical archives free of the sort of uninformed rambling that the internet is so good at producing - but that's the whole point of archiving information in the first place.
And on the other hand, the peer review process is basically an antiquated institution. It assumes that the participants are all objective scientists in white ivory towers, who can be trusted to keep political issues and personal vendettas out of their medical opinions, and we all know that isn't always the case. Perhaps public opinion could function as a sort of reality check on the peer review system, especially considering that 90% of the public would be getting this information from secondary sources (i.e. news media reporting on e-biomed, as opposed to people visiting e-biomed themselves).
Just as a brief example, take a look at the medical marijuana debate. The government has been sticking its dirty little paws in to the "objective" research on marijuana for years, and they've been having a pretty easy time twisting the research into any shape they desire; perhaps if this information were more publicly available, it would be harder for advocates to politicize the research.
In any event, the important thing is to preserve the checks that the medical community already has on the peer review process that ensure its impartiality. As long as that is secure, it's hard for me to believe that the medical journals' subscription revenue outweighs the public's access to medical research. Just my two cents worth...
