Tag Archive for 'peer review'

Joe’s post this week on the need for wholesale reform of the current peer-reviewed journal system caused a stir – following links from BoingBoing, Reddit and Hacker News it’s already our second most popular post ever in terms of traffic, and the comments thread currently sits at 86 comments. It’s (unsurprisingly) a topic that aroused passion among scientists, with strong arguments being made both for and against the current system. [DM]

A paper in Nature this week is that rarest of creatures: a high-impact genomics paper with only two authors. Heng Li and Richard Durbin show that the information contained in a single human genome sequence is sufficient to reveal a surprising amount of information about our recent evolutionary history. For the lay summary, Razib Khan has a typically thorough dissection of the paper and its implications. [DM]

Mary Carmichael has a fantastic piece in Nature (free registration required, annoyingly) about a Minnesotan woman who has devoted her life to attacking newborn screening programs. It’s a suitably balanced article: while the anti-screening activists engage in brazen hyperbole against a system that has unquestionably saved many lives, Carmichael doesn’t shirk away from noting that there have also been abuses of privacy. It’s not a debate that will be going away any time soon. [DM]

Colm O’Dushlaine, a scientist at the Broad Institute, has been analysing his 23andMe data in various ways and documenting his methods and results online. If you’re savvy enough to use the Unix command line you’ll find some useful tips for mining your own data. [DM]

Various Genomes Unzipped members have made the transition to Google’s much-discussed new social media platform, Google Plus. You can find Daniel here, Dan here, Joe here, Luke here and Vince here. [DM]