BIOL 210 Lecture Notes - Lecture 7: Dow Chemical Company, Daubert Standard, Falsifiability
09/26/2017
Lecture 7
• Web of science is less comprehensive and more rigorous than google scholar
o Google scholar will list more citations (this is the one we put on CVs→ looks
better)
o Web of science only takes journal citations from journals on web of science (not
books)
o Go to both so you don’t miss anything
• Having a lot of self citations is normal
• RNAi and brain function: was mcconnell on the right track?
o Certain environmental conditions can modify RNAi such that it has an effect on
certain genes (epigenetics)
• Bohanan: put people in experiment without letting them know, unethical
• Ungar: Baylor college of medicine published a claim of chemical basis of memory
(scotophobin) but the contrasting articles came from very prestigious universities and
studies backing him up came from randoms
• Traditional scientific journals are published by learned societies or private companies
o They are funded by membership fees and institutional subscriptions
o Because their origin is paper and library-based and because quality control was a
feature from the start, they limit the number of accepted papers based of (usually
blind) peer review by experts and editors
▪ Used to be single blind, not double blind
▪ You don’t know who you’re reviewing, and they don’t know who
reviewed them
▪ Important to protect from gender bias (but you can often guess because of
self citations)
o Learned societies: science, NEJM, PNAS, JAMA, BMJ, Proc Roy Soc
o Privately owned journals: nature
▪ This has more risk of bias, purely for profit
o The advent of the web, with its unlimited virtual space and its goal of free access
for all, has led to the invention of open source journals
• Philosophical transactions of the royal society B
o Owned by learned society: no single owner has an incentive to make money or
bias results unless you think the AMA or BMJ wants to bias what’s in journals
o People in oxford persuaded the king to found this society
o Controlled by an editor who considered that not everyone could publish: if you
had observations and you made discoveries, Lord whoever would decide if you
could publish (if you were reputable)
▪ Control by an editor: eventually led to editors who were well-known
scientists in their fields
o Science was called natural philosophy
o Led to process of peer review from experts in the field: they request changes, you
revise your paper according to experts’ (2 or 3) comments
▪ Makes sure a published paper has passed quality control of 3-4 experts in
the field (not perfect, somewhat opinionated, but good)
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