The arena of citizen science and bioethics is the gift that keeps on giving. For background on my views please see this post and this post.
I am disturbed to see the recent article by Laura Bonetta in Cell, titled New Citizens for the Life Sciences (Cell, Volume 138, Issue 6, 1043-1045, 18 September 2009). This article is a relative puff-piece for the merits of citizen science with respect to biology, and in my opinion, a perfect example of the problems inherent in science journalism.
The author does a horrible job of living up to the section head which is called “Leading Edge Analysis.” In fact, Laura Bonetta does no analysis at all-other than some hand waving in this, the only analytical sentence of the piece, “It is too early to say whether such engagement will speed discoveries…”
This author basically wrote a two page advertisement for sites like 23andMe and National Geographic. However, there was no space in the article given to the possibilities for misuse of personal genomic information, or any of the issues with safety and citizen bioscience. Furthermore, Bonetta stuck to covering citizen science that really just involved participating in surveys or counting things (which I discuss in my first article on the subject), but really did not address things like DIYBio or biohacking.
For Cell’s editorial board to call this section “Leading Edge Analysis” and then proceed to allow the author to only provide one viewpoint in the context of the article suggests to me that:
1) Cell has some monetary interest in writing these type of articles, and thus should rename the section “advertisement,” or
2) the editors of Cell should just stick to publishing original research papers, and leave the journalism to those who have the ability to do it with competence.
The particular issue of bioscience and citizen science, as I have previously written, is a very special topic. What works for citizen science in other fields is not necessarily safe when it comes to biology. We should take this topic much more seriously. Unlike Nature, Cell does not have letters to the editor, so I must post my response here.
Ow.
Aren’t you being a little harsh on a freelance science writer? (I think journals can take it, but individuals are another story.)
That is, I don’t take exception to the essence of your criticisms. I too, think it was a puff piece (although these can be restful to read when you are also perusing research articles). But the way you deliver your remarks comes across as slightly – sour grapes, perhaps?
You might consider writing a more documented response piece based on your previous posts, and submitting it for consideration directly in the Leading Edge category? (Although perhaps these are commissioned.) “In addition to Previews, Minireviews, and Reviews, we are introducing a number of new article formats designed to highlight the social, political, economic, and ethical contexts that surround biomedical research worldwide. Some of these new Analysis, Commentary, and Essay articles will be written by leading scientists or policy-makers and others by professional science writers.” If so, I suspect a thoughtful response essay could find a home in another good journal.
Heather, I can see how my comments might be seen as sour grapes, but they are not…I am just really passionate about this issue, because I see it as a potential future problem that we can address now.
I can also see how this might come off as harsh towards the science writer, but I tried to direct my comments mostly towards the editorial board at Cell. However, not all the blame rests there.
I think that many scientists complain about science journalism at cocktail parties, and the only way to improve it is to hold the journalists to the same standards we hold our peers when we review their papers. The writer is this case, as far as I can tell from researching her is a science Ph.D with a distinguished background. I would have expected more from her I guess, but maybe she did what was asked, or just tried to fit an article in the space provided by the journal.
I know that this post may come off harsh-and that is a risk I considered. we should all be a little worried that our science journals like Cell are moving into opinion. I think that should be left to other sources. It is just like cable television news. When you mix opinion with fact so easily-you begin to blur the line.
Michael, I think your last point is extremely relevant. Opinion articles can be (and are) cited in research articles as ‘evidence’ to support an author’s position. This increases the workload on reviewers, editors and readers, having to sort the wheat from the chaff in the reference list.
Pretty soon, people will be citing blogs. Then the universe as we know it will surely end.1
1 citation needed
“Pretty soon, people will be citing blogs. "
It already happened
Don’t forget that a journalist or writer with meticulously accurate and balanced reporting can have it butchered by an editor before it goes to print. A frequent topic on the Association of British Science Writers mailing list is people lamenting editorial changes that undermine the science behind a story.
Eva, that blog citation occurred in an Opinion piece, citing (amongst other things) blogs, other websites and (alledgedly) next door’s dog.
There’s no harm in citing blogs in this way. I have, however, experienced scientists citing their own Opinion type pieces as support for evidence of the importance of a phenomenon in the natural world. Even when the evidence was limited, at best.
Cobi – why would an author put their name to a piece that they don’t agree with after editing? It’s not a rhetorical question. Do they accept editorial butchering just to ensure a paycheck? Why would you accept such editing and return to that editor if it changed the tone and meaning of your article?
Cobi, I’ve perused many of the other pieces by the same journalist and find they have pretty much the same tone and level of documentation. Not bad science journalism (she is a regular in Science), but more journalism perhaps than (difficult, less approachable) science.
My gripe would be that Dr. Bonetta picked low-hanging fruit that had already been amply reported upon elsewhere. Given her background, she could easily have gone more in depth. Granted, she probably had deadlines, etc. but even so. A tour on the blogosphere for start wouldn’t hurt nowadays, when looking for original sources to cite, as many bloggers document their sources meticulously.
I agree with Mike about the problem of citations – if I had a Futures piece published in Nature, I would gladly put it on my CV (not having submitted one, this is unlikely). But I could see that if I didn’t weed it out from my more traditional, scientific contributions, an assessment committee would just see “Nature” and leave it at that (perhaps with a “wow! Single-author paper in Nature!”. Or a book review. Citing an editorial published in Cell seems to be similarly misleading – one is not citing factual evidence to back up one’s claim, but someone’s opinion stated in a powerful vehicle because it conveys other evidence well.
But I’m sure that Cell saw the success of the generalist news-type features in Science, Lancet, NEJM and Nature – as well as of editorials all over the place, and didn’t see why they should be left out in the cold, if it improved the reading experience for potential subscribers.
@ Mike and Eva. Our blog and website citations were used to support the statement that certain perspectives and positions are “out there”. Given the social science origin of the paper, this is rather usual. I very much agree with Mike that one has to match the statement that requires citation and the type of citation.
For certain statements, blogs do not suffice. This is also the case for, as Heather argues quite correctly, news features, editorials, etc. Nevertheless, this is an interesting point, with material/texts of very diverse character becoming “citeable”, the status of a citation becomes more heterogeneous. To a certain extent, this always been the case, esp. in the social sciences and the humanities. It is, however, considering the increasing use of scientometric indicators, an interesting development.
Heather, who are the journals written for? Lets assume that Dr. Bonetta’s work was chopped up by reviewers and to Mike’s point-that she had no control over the final product and had to put her name on it due to some contractual obligation…OK…so…
I am fine with Cell including opinion pieces, (this one looked terrribly like a bad advertisement). My point is if we are to have this mix of general readership + hard science-then we need a clear line of demarcation. A journal like Cell is respected for its “hard science” peer reviewed articles.
When you present a general readership article in a journal like this, it is already going to get high regard because it is mixed with the reputation of the journal. When you also plaster the words “leading edge analysis” next to it, the reader is lead to believe that he or she is really getting an in-depth and well considered article on the subject. I have been reading these for months, and many (not all) do not live up to that. They have an editorial viewpoint (this could be the author or editor) that more often than not is one-sided on the issue.
This article in particular summed up what I had observed in others. If you read this current author’s article on twitter from the same journal-you still get the advertisement style, with little or none of the alternative viewpoint. This is all fine, but maybe Cell should include a letters to the editor section to counterbalance this?
As far as blogs-my personal opinion is that blogs are inherently opinion pieces with little or no real editorial balance…as such they should never be cited. Especially in science. The whole system is built (for better or worse) on both the scientific method and peer review. Without peer review, should we in science take these blogs seriously? Yes, but only if we see them in this context. Large journals are flirting with “mainstreaming” these things and I am concerned about it. (See the pop science on Autism and how “science” blogs have muddied the waters).
I think all journals need to be more explicit about what is opinion and disclose more information about the writer when it comes to stuff like this.
Heather, who are the journals written for? Lets assume that Dr. Bonetta’s work was chopped up by reviewers and to Mike’s point-that she had no control over the final product and had to put her name on it due to some contractual obligation…OK…so…
I am fine with Cell including opinion pieces, (this one looked terrribly like a bad advertisement). My point is if we are to have this mix of general readership + hard science-then we need a clear line of demarcation. A journal like Cell is respected for its “hard science” peer reviewed articles.
When you present a general readership article in a journal like this, it is already going to get high regard because it is mixed with the reputation of the journal. When you also plaster the words “leading edge analysis” next to it, the reader is lead to believe that he or she is really getting an in-depth and well considered article on the subject. I have been reading these for months, and many (not all) do not live up to that. They have an editorial viewpoint (this could be the author or editor) that more often than not is one-sided on the issue.
This article in particular summed up what I had observed in others. If you read this current author’s article on twitter from the same journal-you still get the advertisement style, with little or none of the alternative viewpoint. This is all fine, but maybe Cell should include a letters to the editor section to counterbalance this?
As far as blogs-my personal opinion is that blogs are inherently opinion pieces with little or no real editorial balance…as such they should never be cited. Especially in science. The whole system is built (for better or worse) on both the scientific method and peer review. Without peer review, should we in science take these blogs seriously? Yes, but only if we see them in this context. Large journals are flirting with “mainstreaming” these things and I am concerned about it. (See the pop science on Autism and how “science” blogs have muddied the waters).
I think all journals need to be more explicit about what is opinion and disclose more information about the writer when it comes to stuff like this.
Funnily enough, we have recently been debating whether the “Science News and Views” features in Physiology News ought to have some kind of expert peer review. They don’t currently, as historically we have seen Physiology News as a magazine (not a journal) offering opinion (though we hope informed opinion).
Once or twice we have had people complain that things that “look” superficially like journal articles (which seems largely to mean discussing research papers and citing references) should necessarily have all the trappings of journal article (like multi-reviewer anonymous peer review)
Interestingly, the chief editor of a well-know peer review journal told me that he thought such News & Views “opinion” piece definitely shouldn’t be peer reviewed precisely to differentiate them from “journal-type peer-reviewed hard science”.
Personally I think there is a place for opinion, but it needs to be clear that it is an opinion. I am not sure the line between “science” and “opinion” is quite as clear as some people are making out, though – we must all have seen review articles (peer-reviewed ones, including in well-known journals) which only offer a subset of the evidence on the particular scientific problem they are discussing. Scientists are inevitably on sides in scientific arguments, and equally inevitably do write, opine and review from that perspective.
Sticking to the “label opinion as opinion” theme, I don’t think there is anything wrong with citing a blog providing it is clear why you are citing it. Though blogs are opinions, if you are talking about something like debunking the myths used by the anti-vaccine movement, then by far the best treatments of this are on blogs.
Two of my blog posts have been cited so far. One was an opinion post cited in an Editorial in PLoS Biology. One was a review/BasicPrinciples/educational post, cited in a review paper. My third is coming up soon: a post with data and hypotheses cited in a paper that tested one of those hypotheses.
And another blog post should have been cited.