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Did Murph today because I could. Elliptical runs and a 20 lb vest worn throughout. Broke it up Cindy style.
49:33

This line, on the origins of medical journals, is revealing: “The journals complemented scientific meetings, which had until then been the main way of communicating science. The history of journals since then has been one in which each new discipline eventually grew tired of simply being part of a larger whole and so started its own publication.”

When journals were based on the reports of scientific meetings, they likely represented the culmination of great debate, serious critique, a search for holes in the hypothesis, methods, experiments, results, and a discussion of where the work should go next.

The departure from that debate underscores our modern problem (at least for my perspective). The lack of true criticism in the production of medical publications has resulted in a sewer of self-promotion more akin to the work of a publicist than a scientist.

We know the publish or perish adage is real, but what is less well understood is how the problematic peer-review scheme feigns an actual editorial process. My guess would be, the introduction of the peer-review process came about as a protective measure to prevent the publication of bad science, just as an editor is charged with killing a story if it doesn’t pass the smell test. But how often does that happen in the peer-review world? Hardly ever.

Medical journals do not follow the same rules that journalists (with proper standards) do. They were not intended to be works of journalism and it has been a seismic mistake not to fully appreciate this.

The business model of most medical journals is a dream enterprise. The entire labor force is either voluntary or actually paying the publisher. Can you imagine a newspaper where the editors volunteer, the fact-checkers aren’t paid—and no one knows who they are—and the reporters don’t earn any money for their writing, instead, they must pay to have their work printed? If I paid a news outlet to publish something I wrote, it would be called advertising, not reporting. Why is it any different in medical journals? If scientists pay to get the ink, it’s advertising and we should judge it as such. 

To continue the thought experiment—or gedanken as Gary Taubes like to say—the anonymity of the peer-reviewers would be like opening up The New York Times and finding the masthead was blank. The hidden nature of this crucial process has become a gateway drug to an overall lack of accountability. When the published information turns out to be wrong, or worse still fabricated, as we saw in the CrossFit v. NSCA case, everyone shrugs and points to the peer-reviewers who are given cover by the academic equivalent of witness protection. There they are able to carry on their research without any consequences for their negligence.

This is all made worse by the fact that most mainstream media outlets assume that peer-reviewed studies are actually…fact. When I write for a big newspaper or a magazine I’m often asked to “link the source’s story to a peer-reviewed study.” The study is meant to give credibility to the anecdote, after all if someone studied it and came to the same conclusion it must be true and newsworthy, right?

This begs the question: Why don’t reporters’ fact-check peer-reviewed studies as they would any other source’s account?
In part, because they’ve mistakenly assumed the journals follow the rules of good journalism; surely the rigorous scientific community wouldn’t publish the work if they didn’t think it had credibility. This logic perpetuates the spread of faulty information.

The other harsh reality is that newsrooms are a fraction of the size they were just 10 years ago. Reporters rarely hang out in police stations, court houses, laboratories, etc anymore. The work is no longer about going deep on a beat, it is all about producing copious copy to satisfy the insatiable search engines’ algorithms, driving traffic back to the site. This means that reporters don’t always have the time they need to dive into the data or call around to hear skeptical points of view. When a press release comes in on a peer-reviewed epidemiological study that found an association between rainy weather and diabetes in rats, it is often accepted and covered. The tainted study then infects the general public with unreliable information.

The lack of true critique and transparency in the production of medical journals can easily contaminate our entire supply of knowledge. The reporter and the scientist both lose their way—and their value—when the pursuit of the truth is corrupted by an environment that no longer values serious skepticism, rigorous methods and accountability.

Let’s have more debates in these comments! Skepticism welcome. 
Em

I found it quite refreshing to see Ms. Brooks featured here.   My wife and I had the extraordinary privilege of hearing her read some of her works in person at Missouri State University in the early ‘80’s. One of my favorites, which she read that evening, was “We Real Cool”.  Truly, a Great American Treasure!