Headaches and flu-like symptoms are merely the more common and benign aspects of withdrawal. In some cases (speaking from personal experience here), withdrawal symptoms can include paresthesia, akin to Bell's palsy, and vastly lowered heart rate (on the order of 20 bpm). These symptoms can appear weeks after the initial curtailment of caffeine ingestion.
This is a case which dates back more than 10 years. Baltimore and his associate Imanishi-Kari were accused of falsifying data that was published in an 1986 article in the journal Cell. The case came to a head in 1995, going to the highest levels of the NIH. Eventually, in a very political decision, Baltimore was cleared of fraud, though prior decisions had found Imanishi-Kari guilty of wrongdoing. Despite the fact that almost every scientist who has looked at the data concluded that fraud and scientific misconduct was involved, the law panel decided that this evidence was irrelevant. O'Toole, the grad student of Imanishi-Kari who first blew the whistle by publicly questioning the data, had her career ruined. Baltimore was pressured to resign his post as president of Rockefeller University, and Imanishi-Kari lost her tenure-track position at Tufts. After they were exonerated, Baltimore became president of Cal Tech, and Imanishi-Kari was promoted to associate professor. This case still has a lot of people upset with the ruling.
Peer review is an essential aspect of the process of disseminating scientific knowledge. In today's world, researchers don't have the time to personally verify data published by others which is relevant to their own work. 100 years ago, this wasn't a problem - if someone wrote a paper discussing a new facet of the electromotive principle, one could verify it with a small expenditure of time and resources. Today in the world of high energy physics, when the D0 collaboration at Fermilab publishes a paper with a new W mass measurement, I want to be able to take that number and plug it into my calculations with a certain degree of confidence in its accuracy. I can read the paper, and make sure that they're not doing anything obviously stupid, but I know that before it appears in Physics Review Letters, it's gone through a series of peer reviews, from within the W mass working group, to the D0 collaboration, and finally to independent reviewers appointed by the journal.
In this respect the medical field is no different from high energy physics, and in some ways is even more vulnerable to abuse. Let's say a pharmaceutical company wants to market a new product, and then submits a paper to this e-journal supporting its wonderful new drug. Suppose insufficient testing has been conducted, and there are nasty side effects. People read about this wonderful product, and demand that their doctors prescribe it. Pressure is put on the FDA to approve it. Two years down the line, people start having liver damage. Is this a completely unlikely scenario? We have already seen in recent years how popular products like fen-fen have had to be removed from the market due to dangerous side effects.
According to an article on Nando news: > The proposed "E-biomed" site would have two archives. > > One would accept just about anything. Submissions would be ruled out > only if two reviewers found them "extraneous or outrageous." > > The other archive would include only papers that have been accepted > for publication by journals, but would post them immediately upon > acceptance.
While this sounds like some form of peer review is being offered, the first category will be little better than having no reviewing at all. Considering the number of articles that will no doubt be submitted, are just two reviewers going to be able to do anything more than give an article a very cursory look-over?
Medical professionals will avoid the first site like the plague. The people who are going to use it will be those who are most at risk - the average person who has little or no medical knowledge, and cannot judge the quality of the research published.
As for the quote: "Were all books going to be authoritative and accurate? Were some dangerous to society? We can imagine priests saying, "Mass printing and wide dissemination of books is O.K. so long as we insure that every book is approved by a priest review process." This is a completely spurious analogy. This is not a case of censorship - if someone wants to publish their research they can always create their own journal. Not cheap, but not impossible. Alternative means of publication exist - yes, there's even the web!
Peer review is not perfect, and every year there are cases of fraud and shoddy research. Who can forget the case of the Nobel laureate Dr. Baltimore? And while some innovative research is hampered by the long process of peer review, it's not like there are no other avenues of disseminating this information. More and more journals are going on-line these days, so accessibility is not an issue. What is an issue is the trustworthiness of the data.
We have to consider who will make use of these sites, and how this information will be used. I believe that a peer reviewed journal, despite the several months delay between submission and publication, has a lot more to offer than masses of unsubstantiated junk. The web has become a repository of misinformation and disinformation. These days it is becoming more and more difficult to separate the chaff from the wheat. When this trend spreads to medical information, which can be of a life threatening nature, we need to pause and consider all the consequences.
As a side note, I have read discussion here as to how archival of this information is difficult. This is not the case, and not relevant to the issue. Standard formats have been around for quite a while, such as postscript and PDF. Many institutions and journals have made their documents electronically available, just look at SLAC spires (http://www-slac.slac.stanford.edu/find/spires.h tml), the CERN library server (http://weblib.cern.ch/cgi-bin/mkpage.pp?/all) to name a few.
Slashdot Mirror
Headaches and flu-like symptoms are merely the more common and benign aspects of withdrawal. In some cases (speaking from personal experience here), withdrawal symptoms can include paresthesia, akin to Bell's palsy, and vastly lowered heart rate (on the order of 20 bpm). These symptoms can appear weeks after the initial curtailment of caffeine ingestion.
This is a case which dates back more than 10 years. Baltimore and his
associate Imanishi-Kari were accused of falsifying data that was
published in an 1986 article in the journal Cell. The case came to a
head in 1995, going to the highest levels of the NIH. Eventually, in
a very political decision, Baltimore was cleared of fraud, though
prior decisions had found Imanishi-Kari guilty of wrongdoing. Despite
the fact that almost every scientist who has looked at the data
concluded that fraud and scientific misconduct was involved, the law
panel decided that this evidence was irrelevant. O'Toole, the grad
student of Imanishi-Kari who first blew the whistle by publicly
questioning the data, had her career ruined. Baltimore was pressured to
resign his post as president of Rockefeller University, and
Imanishi-Kari lost her tenure-track position at Tufts. After they were
exonerated, Baltimore became president of Cal Tech, and Imanishi-Kari
was promoted to associate professor. This case still has a lot of
people upset with the ruling.
Peer review is an essential aspect of the process of disseminating
h tml), the CERN library
scientific knowledge. In today's world, researchers don't have the
time to personally verify data published by others which is relevant
to their own work. 100 years ago, this wasn't a problem - if someone
wrote a paper discussing a new facet of the electromotive principle,
one could verify it with a small expenditure of time and resources.
Today in the world of high energy physics, when the D0 collaboration
at Fermilab publishes a paper with a new W mass measurement, I want to
be able to take that number and plug it into my calculations with a
certain degree of confidence in its accuracy. I can read the paper,
and make sure that they're not doing anything obviously stupid, but I
know that before it appears in Physics Review Letters, it's gone
through a series of peer reviews, from within the W mass working
group, to the D0 collaboration, and finally to independent reviewers
appointed by the journal.
In this respect the medical field is no different from high energy
physics, and in some ways is even more vulnerable to abuse. Let's
say a pharmaceutical company wants to market a new product, and then
submits a paper to this e-journal supporting its wonderful new drug.
Suppose insufficient testing has been conducted, and there are nasty
side effects. People read about this wonderful product, and demand
that their doctors prescribe it. Pressure is put on the FDA to approve
it. Two years down the line, people start having liver damage. Is
this a completely unlikely scenario? We have already seen in recent
years how popular products like fen-fen have had to be removed from
the market due to dangerous side effects.
According to an article on Nando news:
> The proposed "E-biomed" site would have two archives.
>
> One would accept just about anything. Submissions would be ruled out
> only if two reviewers found them "extraneous or outrageous."
>
> The other archive would include only papers that have been accepted
> for publication by journals, but would post them immediately upon
> acceptance.
While this sounds like some form of peer review is being offered, the
first category will be little better than having no reviewing at all.
Considering the number of articles that will no doubt be submitted, are
just two reviewers going to be able to do anything more than give
an article a very cursory look-over?
Medical professionals will avoid the first site like the plague. The
people who are going to use it will be those who are most at risk -
the average person who has little or no medical knowledge, and cannot
judge the quality of the research published.
As for the quote: "Were all books going to be authoritative and
accurate? Were some dangerous to society? We can imagine priests
saying, "Mass printing and wide dissemination of books is O.K. so
long as we insure that every book is approved by a priest review
process." This is a completely spurious analogy. This is not a
case of censorship - if someone wants to publish their research
they can always create their own journal. Not cheap, but not
impossible. Alternative means of publication exist - yes, there's
even the web!
Peer review is not perfect, and every year there are cases of fraud
and shoddy research. Who can forget the case of the Nobel laureate
Dr. Baltimore? And while some innovative research is hampered by
the long process of peer review, it's not like there are no other
avenues of disseminating this information. More and more journals
are going on-line these days, so accessibility is not an issue. What
is an issue is the trustworthiness of the data.
We have to consider who will make use of these sites, and how this
information will be used. I believe that a peer reviewed journal,
despite the several months delay between submission and publication,
has a lot more to offer than masses of unsubstantiated junk. The web
has become a repository of misinformation and disinformation. These
days it is becoming more and more difficult to separate the chaff from
the wheat. When this trend spreads to medical information, which can
be of a life threatening nature, we need to pause and consider all the
consequences.
As a side note, I have read discussion here as to how archival of this
information is difficult. This is not the case, and not relevant to
the issue. Standard formats have been around for quite a while, such
as postscript and PDF. Many institutions and journals have made their
documents electronically available, just look at SLAC spires
(http://www-slac.slac.stanford.edu/find/spires.
server (http://weblib.cern.ch/cgi-bin/mkpage.pp?/all) to name a few.