David Tuller: Trial By Error: My Letter about MUS to the British Journal of General Practice

An astute editor might see this as an opportunity to steal a march on his competitors by showing a greater commitment to accuracy, integrity and ethical standards. A first very tentative step has been made. It just needs a little further reflection.
 
rvallee said:
I'm getting really mixed signals about what exactly is it that medical research journal editors actually do
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Sean said:
Failure to correct demonstrable errors is a sacking offence for a journal editor, IMHO.
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The British Journal of General Practice is not strictly speaking a research journal. It is a professional journal - it represents the interests of a particular profession - that of general practice.

Which may mean that correcting demonstrable errors could be a sacking offence, if the correction is not in the interest of the profession as judged by the board of trustees.

In the old days there was a distinction between research and professional journals - papers on your CV for research assessment came under either one or other category - with different Brownie points.

The BMJ has always been a professional journal. I am not sure about the Lancet - it seems to be above classification.

Over the years the mentality behind journals changed in various ways. Initially there was a change from professional chit-chat to hard research - when citation indices started to get kudos. But more recently publication has been taken over by the cynicism of the open market and almost everything is propaganda of one sort or another. Real science has almost disappeared.

So the editor's response might have been quite similar fifty years ago but not twenty five years ago.
 
Jonathan Edwards said:
The British Journal of General Practice is not strictly speaking a research journal. It is a professional journal - it represents the interests of a particular profession - that of general practice.

Which may mean that correcting demonstrable errors could be a sacking offence, if the correction is not in the interest of the profession as judged by the board of trustees.
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So their profession takes precedence over patient care and safety, and scientific accuracy, that says it all really and from what we know from all these years of ME, not surprising in the least, but what an ethically and scientifically bankrupt perspective. Shame on them.
 
Dear Dr Tuller

If you are certain that a correction would be of any value – the data are a decade old now – please let me have one or two short sentences that you would like us to publish, for consideration.
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The zombie statistic that Professor Chew-Graham summoned into existence in an editorial in the British Journal of General Practice, for which Professor Roger Jones is responsible, is two years old.

I shall now fall upon my sword in a flagrant breach of Godwin's Law - would Roger Jones conclude that a holocaust denier should not be challenged because the data are now 70 years old?
 
Two weeks ago, I exchanged e-mails with Professor Roger Jones, editor of the British Journal of General Practice. I asked him to correct a false statement in an editorial about the cost of so-called medically unexplained symptoms to the National Health Service.

In response, he invited me to send in “one or two short sentences” that the journal would consider publishing. I declined this invitation and suggested it was his and the authors’ job to fix their own mistakes. I haven’t heard back.

Although the journal published the editorial two years ago, Professor Jones rightly pointed out in his e-mail to me that the data being mis-cited were ten years old. He appeared to suggest it was therefore a waste of time to bother correcting them–although I must have been mistaken because no editor of a prominent medical journal would make such a ridiculous suggestion.

But perhaps Professor Jones has more pressing matters on his mind than dealing with dated data. As it turns out, he is a current candidate for president of the Royal College of General Practitioners.
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http://www.virology.ws/2019/05/20/t...r-to-the-british-journal-of-general-practice/
 
In comments E Goudsmidt says don’t bother with MUS. Can’t get my head round the idea that ME being treated as an MUS should be ignored as not worth bothering with.

ETA. I see someone has now responded in another comment

ETA 2 also does she really imagine DT doesn’t already know the stuff about process. I found her comment patronising
 
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Musing upon the Goudsmit response has led to some idle speculation regarding the responses of her and Jones. What is the date of publication of uncorrected material made available on line?

There is a date of first publication, which is what they seem to be discussing. I would argue that there is ongoing publication. It is republished again when it is accessed. I am sure there must be legal precedents on this, but don't know what the answer is. It seems highly likely that the information was potentially published today.

And now a little quiz. Do you think Jones was associated with a) Bristol University b) Kings College c)other.

Congratulations if you answered b)
 
Goudsmit said:
Thanks for trying. British medicine is going through a dodgy phase where inaccuracies don’t matter. That is why we should ensure that we don’t do the same. Basically, the protocol here is that you send in a letter within four weeks of publication. That’s how it works. To be invited to send a letter so much later means they are taking you seriously.
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I think here she might be saying: a) British medicine in a phase where it arrogantly presumes inaccuracies don't matter, when of course they do. b) The 4-week protocol is maybe symptomatic of that arrogance, and that is currently how it works, even though it is cr*p. c) Given 'a' and 'b', they seem to be taking notice.

I suspect she may be also saying to not try fighting the system, but of course ... to hell with that! If that is the system then it is that which is screwing people up, so it simply has to be challenged.
 
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