The journal Science is adding an extra round of statistical checks to its peer-review process, editor-in-chief Marcia McNutt ann

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问题    The journal Science is adding an extra round of statistical checks to its peer-review process, editor-in-chief Marcia McNutt announced today. The policy follows similar efforts from other journals, after widespread concern that basic mistakes in data analysis are contributing to the irreproducibility of many published research findings.
   "Readers must have confidence in the conclusions published in our journal," writes McNutt in an editorial. Working with the American Statistical Association, the journal has appointed seven experts to a statistics board of reviewing editors (SBoRE). Manuscript will be flagged up for additional scrutiny by the journal’s internal editors, or by its existing Board of Reviewing Editors or by outside peer reviewers. The SBoRE panel will then find external statisticians to review these manuscripts.
   Asked whether any particular papers had impelled the change, McNutt said: "The creation of the ’statistics board’ was motivated by concerns broadly with the application of statistics and data analysis in scientific research and is part of Science’s overall drive to increase reproducibility in the research we publish."
   Giovanni Parmigiani, a biostatistician at the Harvard School of Public Health, a member of the SBoRE group, says he expects the board to "play primarily an advisory role." He agreed to join because he "found the foresight behind the establishment of the SBoRE to be novel, unique and likely to have a lasting impact. This impact will not only be through the publications in Science itself, but hopefully through a larger group of publishing places that may want to model their approach after Science."
   John Ioannidis, a physician who studies research methodology, says that the policy is "a most welcome step forward" and "long overdue." "Most journals are weak in statistical review, and this damages the quality of what they publish, I think that, for the majority of scientific papers nowadays, statistical review is more essential than expert review," he says. But he noted that biomedical journals such as Annals of Internal Medicine, the Journal of the American Medical Association and The Lancet pay strong attention to statistical review.
   Professional scientists are expected to know how to analyze data, but statistical errors are alarmingly common in published research, according to David Vaux, a cell biologist. Researchers should improve their standards, he wrote in 2012, but journals should also take a tougher line, "engaging reviewers who are statistically literate and editors who can verify the process". Vaux says that Science’s idea to pass some papers to statisticians "has some merit, but a weakness is that it relies on the board of reviewing editors to identify ’the papers that need scrutiny’ in the first place".

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答案 《科学》杂志总主编玛西娅-麦克纳特今天宣布,该杂志将在同行评审流程中新加入一个统计检查环节。该政策效仿了其他期刊的类似做法,这是考虑到了一个人们广泛忧虑的现象:许多已发表的研究成果由于数据分析存在基本错误而导致实验结果不能重现。 “读者必须要对刊登在本刊的结论有信心,”麦克纳特在一篇社论中写道。与美国统计协会相配合,该期刊已委任七名专家成立一个统计审核编辑小组(SBoRE)。需要额外审核的作者原稿将被打上标签,这可以由杂志内部编辑、编辑审核组或是外部同行人员操作。这类稿件将由SBORE寻找外部统计人员进行审核。 在被问及是否有任何特定的论文推动了该项变革,麦克纳特说:“人们非常担心统计和数据分析在科研中的应用问题,此外,《科学》杂志也努力增加其刊登的研究结果的可重现性,两者共同作用促成了‘统计小组’的创立。” 乔瓦尼-帕玛强尼,哈佛大学公共卫生学院的一位生物统计学家,也是SBORE的成员。他说,他期望评审小组能“重点扮演咨询建议的角色。”他同意加盟,是因为他“发现创建SBoRE背后的远见是新颖独特的,并很有可能产生持久的影响。这种影响不仅会通过《科学》杂志的出版本身来实现,而且很有希望能通过更大的一群出版机构来实现,因为他们也许会效仿《科学》杂志的做法。” 约翰-伊恩尼蒂斯,一位钻研研究方法论的内科医生,称该政策是“非常值得欢迎的一步”但“姗姗来迟”。“大多数期刊在统计审查方面很薄弱.而这有损刊物的质量。我认为,对如今大多数科技论文来说,统计审核比专家评审更重要,”他说。但他指出,生物医学期刊,如《内科医学年鉴》《美国医学协会杂志》和《柳叶刀》杂志,都非常重视统计审核。 按细胞生物学家大卫-沃克斯的说法,专业的科学家们都应该知道如何分析数据,但刊登的研究成果中的统计误差非常普遍,令人担忧。他在2012年写到,研究人员应该提高自身的水平,而期刊也应该采取更加强硬的路线,“要让内行的统计学评审人员以及那些能够验证流程的编辑们参与”。沃克斯说,《科学》杂志把一些论文交给统计人员处理的主意“有一定的好处,但缺陷在于,它依赖于编辑审核小组首先确定‘需要审核的论文’”。

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