Category Archives: science

The 99.9999%: more thoughts on stats in the autism sequencing paper

By Michael Eisen | Published: April 9, 2012

Yesterday I got incensed about a quote in a story in the NYT from a prominent autism researcher about the significance of findings in their recent paper (which described the sequencing of protein-coding genes from autistic individuals, their parents and siblings). The statement that so offended me, from the lead author of the paper, was that […]

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Statistical BS from autism geneticist in New York Times

By Michael Eisen | Published: April 8, 2012

[UPDATE: There is a followup to this post here.] Last week Nature published the results of three studies (1,2,3) looking at the sequences of protein-coding genes from hundreds of individuals with autism and their parents. The main results are that there is a higher rate of de novo mutations in affected individuals, that these primarily […]

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The AAAS believes the public should read press releases not papers

By Michael Eisen | Published: April 4, 2012

There’s been a lot of media coverage of and discussion about a recent paper from Bert Vogelstein and Victor Velvulescu about the utility of whole-genome sequencing to predict disease. Using previously published data on disease occurrence in identical twins, and a relatively simple mathematical model, the authors conclude that not only isn’t sequencing very useful for […]

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Xenophobic scientific publishers: open access aids foreign enemies

By Michael Eisen | Published: March 6, 2012

The American Association of Publishers and the anti-open access DC Principles group have sent letters to both houses of Congress outlining why they oppose the Federal Research Public Access Act, which would make the results of all federally funded research publicly available. They largely trot out the same tired “not all publishers are alike, so don’t impose […]

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We won the Battle of the Research Works Act. Now let’s win the War for Open Access.

By Michael Eisen | Published: February 27, 2012

Late last year Elsevier and two of its allies in Congress quietly introduced a bill that would have halted the trend towards increased public access to the results of government funded research headlined by the NIH’s Public Access Policy. This brazen act, which its backers hoped would pass unnoticed in the quiet of the holidays, […]

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My brain just exploded: CUP pushes “article rental scheme”

By Michael Eisen | Published: February 21, 2012

With fake publishers all the rage on Twitter, I was sure that this press release from Cambridge Journals was some kind of joke. Cambridge Journals has announced a brand new Article Rental scheme, which will see single academic research articles being made available over a 24-hour period at a significantly lower cost. More brilliance from […]

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Better version of “Boycott Elsevier” t-shirt

By Michael Eisen | Published: February 15, 2012

And here’s a hi-res version of the image if you want it. Some other versions I’ve been working on:  

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Because the “Boycott Elsevier” movement needed a t-shirt

By Michael Eisen | Published: February 12, 2012

I decided to design an image: For those of you who don’t recognize it, it’s inspired by Elsevier’s old printers mark, emblazoned in all of their texts since the 17th century: I hope the iconography of my image is self-explanatory.

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New bill in Congress would EXPAND federal public access policies!

By Michael Eisen | Published: February 9, 2012

A showdown is looming in Congress as defenders of the public interest have moved to counter the special interest sellout of the pending Research Works Act (RWA), which would end public access to the results of Federally funded research. A bipartisan group of legislators in both houses of  Congress just introduced the Federal Research Public Access Act […]

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The widely held notion that high-impact publications determine who gets academic jobs, grants and tenure is wrong. Stop using it as an excuse.

By Michael Eisen | Published: February 4, 2012

In response to my previous post on boycotting non-OA journals, my friend Gavin Sherlock made the following comment: I laud what you are doing, and you have changed the world of publishing forever for the better. However, I was specifically told by my chair that I need a Nature or Science paper to make my […]

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