Oct17

Not to be outdone, Nature Magazine rejects data, publishes opinion

In: science politics • Tags: , ,

Barely a fortnight has passed since Science Magazine published the outcomes of a hoax perpetrated by one of their reporters, John Bohannon. Not surprisingly, the news article was widely criticized, not the least on this obscure blog. The content was simple enough: Bohannon picked a swath of largely fake journals, submitted fake manuscripts and boasted that more than 60% of his submissions were accepted. My criticism of this stunt was that we actually do have reliable, peer-reviewed data on topics such as the quality of the articles in the scientific literature – only that Science Magazine has refused to publish these data.

Today, not be outdone by their major rival, Nature Magazine (which also rejected our manuscript on precisely the same topic) publishes an opinion piece on journal rank. This article laments that perhaps scientists are becoming fed up with the journal hierarchy, but nevertheless recounts several individual scientist’s opinions on how good they felt about their papers in Nature Magazine and how they might, possibly, have helped their careers. It is quite telling that Nature publishes this touchy-feely article, but rejects publishing a paper that presents the hard, cold facts, namely that there isn’t anything in the available literature that could be used as a justification for the status of Nature or Science and their ilk, by providing the following reason:

we will decline to pursue [your manuscript] further as we feel we have aired many of these issues already in our pages recently

Well, if that is the case, why publish this opinion piece instead of the data?

The only time there is any sort of reference to actual data is at the very end, when they cite a study, indicating that more and more highly cited papers are published outside of the traditional ‘top’ journals.

In contrast to the article in Science Magazine, though, it has to be emphasized that at least Nature Magazine does not pretend their article contains actual data and they are upfront about the anecdotal nature of their article:

Posted on October 17, 2013 at 09:44 73 Comments
Oct08

Almost 80 years on, progress on operant and classical conditioning

In: science news • Tags: , , , , ,

ResearchBlogging.orgThis year’s Winter Conference on Animal Learning and Behavior (WCALB) will be on one of my oldest and most central research projects, the commonalities and differences between operant and classical conditioning. I picked this project for my Diploma (Master’s) thesis way back in 1995, because I had learned about these forms of conditioning in high-school and couldn’t believe it when I heard that nobody knew how the brain was doing it.

Little did I know back then, that already in the 1930s B.F. Skinner and the students of Ivan Pavlov, Konorski and Miller, had started discussing how operant and classical conditioning are similar and how they differ. It wasn’t until I had started my PhD on this topic, that I had found these gems in the dusty bound volumes of our library. Many of the arguments and questions raised in this soon 80 year-old exchange became the basis for my research program in the following now almost 20 years. When I embarked on this project, six decades had already passed with significant progress, but without answers to these fundamental questions.

The first major breakthrough from my perspective came with our discovery that operant and classical processes can be genetically separated, using the right behavioral experiments. The experimental separation of ‘Skinnerian’ and ‘Pavlovian’ components had not been possible before. These results showed that what made these processes different was not how the animal was learning (i.e., operantly or classically), but what it learned (i.e., about external stimuli, e.g. Pavlov’s bell, or about their own behavior, e.g. pressing the lever in a Skinner box). Thus, in order to avoid confusion between the procedures (operant vs. classical) and the mechanisms, we had to come up with descriptive terms for the learning mechanisms. After much discussion and back-and-forth, we arrived at ‘world-learning’ for the mechanism that detects and processes relationships in the external world and at ‘self-learning’ for the mechanism that detects and processes the consequences of an animal’s own behavior.

The main reason why traditional experiments failed to uncover this distinction appears to be that the depressed lever in a Skinner box constitutes an external stimulus that signals food for the animal, just as Pavlov’s bell does for his dogs. Much like Pavlov’s dogs would bark at the bell when hungry, rats in a Skinner box use whatever means they have to press the lever – the specific behavior for pressing the lever is not relevant and hence not learned. Skinner himself noted that “The lever cannot be removed” as a technical problem in studying the processes involved in his type of conditioning. In our experiments, we were able to overcome this problem and find the genetically separable mechanisms, which later were shown by other groups to be evolutionarily conserved.

We have since found out that the two learning mechanisms interact in order to establish adaptive behavioral choice and allow the animal to always establish the right equilibrium between efficiency and flexibility while it is balancing the need to explore new resources with the need to exploit the resource at hand.

Now, after all these years, it is the greatest honor to be invited to give the keynote address to an entire session just on this research topic. Granted, this is not a major conference with thousands of attendees – it is a small meeting with only a few dozen people. Nevertheless, after almost two generations of researchers came and went, these people are the remaining experts for a field long abandoned by many colleagues as an unsolvable problem. If you find this long-standing and challenging research topic as exciting as we do, I invite you to join us in Winter Park, Colorado this coming February 8-12, 2014.

Information from the organizer:

The Winter Conference on Animal Learning and Behavior will convene in Winter Park, Colorado from Saturday evening, February 8, with departure Wednesday morning, February 12, 2014. If you are interested in attending WCALB 2014, please send your small refundable deposit by October 21, 2013 so we know how many condominiums to reserve. See “*DEPOSITS*” section below.

*KEYNOTE ADDRESS*

“Pavlovian and Skinnerian Processes are Genetically Separable”

Björn Brembs, Universität Regensburg

Abstract–The commonalities and differences between operant and classical conditioning have been debated ever since Skinner and Konorski embarked on their epic exchange about “two types of conditioned reflex and a pseudo type” in the 1930s. New techniques that surmount experimental design problems identified in early research allow for a much improved separation of the two types of conditioning. These technical advances, combined with modern genetic manipulations, provide evidence that Pavlovian and Skinnerian processes separate not between the learning procedure (operant vs. classical), but between learning content (self vs. non-self). The picture emerging today reinforces Skinner’s early insight that operant conditioning is a composite situation, comprised of a ‘Pavlovian’ component (learning about stimuli – ‘world-learning’) and a ‘Skinnerian’ component (learning about the consequences of actions – ‘self-learning’). A research program that distinguished these processes genetically is described.

 

Björn Brembs is Professor of Neurogenetics at Universität Regensburg. He obtained his doctorate in genetics and neurobiology from Universität Würzburg and has done post-doctoral research at the University of Texas Houston Health Science Center.Thematically, Dr. Brembs’ research concerns the general organization of behavior with regards to reward and punishment with the objective of better understanding how brains accomplish adaptive behavioral choice.

 *FOCUS SESSION*

“Operant and Classical Learning: Comparisons and Interactions”

Allen Neuringer, Peter Killeen, Jeremie Jozefowiez (Université Lille Nord de France), Michael Commons, Karen Pryor and Stanley Weiss have already joined the Focus Session. The format is presentations (up to 25-minutes) with extended discussion among participants in a Research Seminar Session. Additional qualified participants can be added. Let me (sweiss@american.edu) know if you would like to join this session.

*MEETING, WINTER PARK AND ACCOMMODATIONS*

The Winter Conference is a friendly and informal meeting that provides an opportunity to combine intensive, scientifically rigorous discussions — related to animal conditioning, behavior and learning — with skiing at one of Colorado’s premier ski areas, Winter Park. See website (https://www.american.edu/cas/psychology/wcalb/index.cfm) for breadth of WCALB paper sessions that reflect participants’ research interests. All participants are invited to make a presentation and suggest topics. Graduate students are welcome and can present with their advisor’s endorsement.

There is downhill skiing for all skill levels, up to black diamond, as well as excellent cross-country skiing in the Arapaho National Forest, Devil’s Thumb and Snow Mountain Ranch. The majestic snow-covered Rockies in winter are breathtaking.

The all inclusive cost for registration, four days in a shared Snowblaze condominium, an opening buffet reception and dinner at a fine Winter Park restaurant is only $375/person or $750/couple (couples have their own room, usually with private bath, in a condo). The Snowblaze is located in Winter Park near restaurants and shops. It has an excellent health club with sauna, steam room, hot tub, pool, weight room and handball courts. All units have complete kitchens.

If available, a family can have an entire 2-bedroom condominium unit for $1,125 plus $115 for each person over three. The 2-bedroom units each sleep up to six people if a convertible sofa in the living room is used. All family members are invited to the opening buffet reception, Conference dinner and sessions.

 *DEPOSITS*

We will be in the Colorado Rockies just a week before the prime ski season starts. Therefore, condominiums must be reserved early. If you think you would like to attend WCALB 2014, please let me (sweiss@american.edu) know ASAP by e-mail and send your *refundable* (until November 30) deposit ($50 per person, $100 per couple, $200 per family) by October 21, 2013. This will help insure a place for you in our limited number of reserved condominiums. Make checks out to Stanley Weiss, WCALB with “WCALB 2014″ in the lower left corner. Final payment is due November 30, 2013.

Please send your payment to:

 

Stanley Weiss, Convener
Winter Conference on Animal Learning & Behavior
Department of Psychology
AmericanUniversity
Washington, DC 20016

 

We will do our best to include late registrants in the Conference, but often they have had to pay substantially more for their accommodations because our reserved condominiums were full.Therefore, if you are interested in attending the Conference let me know soon and send your refundable (until November 30) deposit. A CALL for presentations will go out to registered participants in early December.If you have any questions or suggestions, contact me at sweiss@american.edu.

I hope to see you in Winter Park!

Stan

 

Stanley J. Weiss
Professor of Experimental Psychology Emeritus
American University
Washington, D. C. 20016
Phone: 301-656-3454
Fax: 202-885-1023
e-mail:sweiss@american.edu

B. F. Skinner (1935). Two Types of Conditioned Reflex and a Pseudo Type The Journal of General Psychology, 12 (1), 66-77 DOI: 10.1080/00221309.1935.9920088
J. Konorski, & S. Miller (1937). On Two Types of Conditioned Reflex The Journal of General Psychology, 16 (1), 264-272 DOI: 10.1080/00221309.1937.9917950
B. F. Skinner (1937). Two Types of Conditioned Reflex: A Reply to Konorski and Miller The Journal of General Psychology, 16 (1), 272-279 DOI: 10.1080/00221309.1937.9917951
J. Konorski, & S. Miller (1937). Further Remarks on two Types of Conditioned Reflex The Journal of General Psychology, 17 (1), 405-407 DOI: 10.1080/00221309.1937.9918010

Posted on October 8, 2013 at 10:27 15 Comments
Oct06

How embarrassing was the ‘journal sting’ for Science Magazine?

In: science politics • Tags: , ,

By now, everybody reading this obscure blog knows about the so-called sting operation by John Bohannon in Science Magazine last week. As virtually everybody has pointed out, the outcome of this stunt is entirely meaningless. Here are a few analogies that could serve to demonstrate about how embarrassingly inane this whole project really was:

Science Magazine journalist exposes bank transfer scam by sending bogus bank account numbers.

or:

Science Magazine journalist demonstrates efficiency of homeopathy by treating over 300 patients with cold symptoms – 62% feel fine five days later.

or:

Science Magazine journalist proves that accepting a single fraudulent/erroneous article invalidates all scholarly papers a journal has ever published.

Who can come up with some more?

Posted on October 6, 2013 at 16:20 17 Comments
Oct04

Science Magazine rejects data, publishes anecdote

In: science politics • Tags: , , , , ,

Yesterday, Science Magazine published a news story (not a peer-reviewed paper) by Gonzo-Scientist John Bohannon on a sting operation in which a journalist submitted a bogus manuscript to 304 open access journals (observe that no toll access control group was used). Science Magazine reports that 157 journals accepted and 98 rejected the manuscript. No words on any control groups or other data that would indicate what the average acceptance rate for bogus manuscripts might be in general.

As Michael Eisen points out, this story is merely the pot calling the kettle black, when Science Magazine is replete with bogus articles (such as that on #arseniclife, for instance) and the magazine has one of the highest retraction rates of the entire industry. Which brings me to the main point of this post: it should come as no surprise that Science Magazine publishes a news story on an ill-conducted sting operation, an anecdote without proper controls – that’s what glamor magazines like Science, Cell or Nature do. The data that we have on this fact are quite unequivocal: hi-ranking journals like these retract many more papers than any other journal and a large fraction of these are retracted because of fraud. There is not even a single quality-related metric in the literature that would confidently express any advantage, quality-wise, of hi-ranking journals over others. However, there are a number of metrics which suggest that, in fact, the quality and reliability of the science published in these GlamMagz is actually below average.

To make things worse, when we submitted this data to Science Magazine, they rejected it with the remark that “we feel that the scope and focus of your paper make it more appropriate for a more specialized journal”. Obviously, Science Magazine values anecdotes more than actual data. No surprise their retraction rate is going through the roof: rejecting data that make them look bad and publish anecdotes that make them look good.

Posted on October 4, 2013 at 08:38 189 Comments
Oct01

All agree: there is no need for the publisher’s authorized version

In: science politics • Tags: , ,

Recently, a statement of librarian Rick Anderson has made the rounds:

if I know that a publisher allows green deposit of all articles without embargo, then the likelihood that we’ll maintain a paid subscription drops dramatically

Of course, when you can get the same content for free, why should you pay for it? Apparently, Mr. Anderson does not value the work a publisher has put into their version of a scholarly article enough to pay for it, at least not compared to the author’s copy in the ‘green’ OA repository. Scientists have long asked what this supposed value actually is, so scientists and libraries seem to agree that whatever it is publishers add to a scholarly article, it’s not worth a whole lot. Now, Joe Esposito chimes in and also agrees:

Now you can find an article simply by typing the title or some keywords into Google or some other search mechanism. The Green version of the article appears; there is no need to seek the publisher’s authorized version.

This must be a first: librarians, scientists and publishers all agree, there is no need for the publisher’s authorized version. Then please remind me, why do we need publishers? What is it they are doing, if nobody can put a finger, let alone a price tag on it?

Apparently, not only in academic publishing people are asking similar questions: in this interview, Tucker Max writes that brand-name publishers “are all essentially dead companies walking, milking their backlist cash cows for as long as they can until they disarticulate and die”. The same can be said of legacy academic publishers.

P.S.: I think Stevan Harnad might have two answers: 1. to put their stamp of approval on the paper and 2. without publishers no green OA and without 100% green OA no fair gold OA. WRT 1, I’d argue that there is no evidence of journals differing in the quality of the papers they publish. WRT 2, I’d argue that green OA is not the only way to a modern scholarly infrastructure for text, data and software.

Posted on October 1, 2013 at 10:06 28 Comments
Sep24

Is de Gruyter’s lobby-by-proxy not lobbyism?

In: science politics • Tags: , , , ,

Sven Fund, CEO of the German publishing house de Gruyter was recently interviewed by Richard Poynder in his widely read interview series on open access. In the interview, he first avoided answering the question if de Gruyter had ever lobbied against open access. However, in a later correspondence with Richard Poynder, he made unambiguously clear:

“Just for the record: No, De Gruyter has never lobbied against OA.”

Now, this statement seems somewhat surprising, as de Gruyter is a member of the “Börsenverein des Deutschen Buchhandels”, the trade organization of publishers in Germany. This organization states itself that it “accompanies the recent legislative reforms with intense lobbying” (own translation). In other words, de Gruyter may not have a “Vice President of Government Relations” as Elsevier has in Angelika Lex, but it is a paying member of the one organization that does the lobbying. The kind of changes the German publishers would like to see in this legislation is quite obvious: “a right to second publication [i.e., in green open access repositories] carries no benefits and will cost the tax-payer money that is dearly needed in research and elsewhere” (my loose translation).

So, has de Gruyter not obviously paid their own trade organization to lobby against open access? Does Mr. Fund think we cannot enter [börsenverein “open access”] into a search engine and just click on the first two links that come up? This is a prime example of the raised middle finger publishers have been prominently presenting towards academia at large for the last decade. Why should anyone ever deal with organizations like this again?

In a few weeks, on October 10, I’ll be on a panel with Mr. Fund at the Frankfurt Book Fair. We’ll see if these obscene gestures of publishers towards academics become a topic of the discussion.

UPDATE: Since I commented on the interview, Mr. Fund has replied. However, he does not apologize for an oversight when he forgot that his company was a member of an organization (perhaps also other organizations) that actively and intensely lobby against open access. Nor does he indicate that he considers canceling the membership with this organization, nor is there apparently any public record that he even disagrees with the anti-OA lobbying efforts of the Börsenverein. Instead, he writes that we should ask the management of the Börsenverein, whether he disagrees with them or not. Thank you, Mr. Fund for proving my point. I rest my case.

UPDATE 2: Not only does the Börsenverein lobby intensely against open access, on occasion of these lobbying efforts on November 15, 2004, the corporate counsel of the Börsenverein, Christian Sprang, was recorded as saying: “scientists are our natural enemies”. So Fund’s company supports an organization that sees scientists as their enemies.

Posted on September 24, 2013 at 09:10 19 Comments
Sep10

The cost of the rejection-resubmission cycle

In: researchblogging • Tags: , ,

ResearchBlogging.orgRejection is one of the unpleasant but inevitable components of life. There are positive components to rejection: they build character, they force you to deal with negativity and sometimes they force you to change your life to avoid future rejections. In science, if your submitted manuscript is rejected by the journal you submitted it to, Calcagno et al. reported that the way the authors change the manuscript has an effect on future citations this manuscript receives. The effect is on the order of ~0.1 citations, tiny.

So much about the benefits. How about the costs? On the whole, peer-review costs an estimated 2.2 billion € (US$ ~2.8b) annually (Research Information Network, 2008), so re-review costs money. How much, I don’t think anybody knows. However, revise, resubmit and re-review costs time as well. Time in which the article might have been cited. Çağan H. Şekercioğlu has now provided us with a rough estimate of the citation cost of the rejection-resubmission cycle (toll access). The gist of his analysis:

On average, each resubmitted paper accumulated 47.4 fewer citations by being published later, with an overall opportunity cost of 190 lost citations.

Compared to these costs, the estimated benefit of ~0.1 citations appears laughable. It is quite likely that Casey Bergman is correct in his assessment of the reason why Calcagno et al. was published in Science:

Nature and Science have a vested interest in making the case that it is in the best interest of scientists to submit their most important work to (their) highly selective journals and risk having it be rejected.  This gives Nature and Science first crack at selecting the (what authors think is their) best science and serves to maintain their hegemony in the scientific publishing marketplace.

Çağan’s analysis shows quite unequivocally: the citation costs clearly outweigh the potential benefits of the rejection-resubmission cycle. I wonder if he submitted it to Nature and Science as well, before publishing it with Current Biology and how much that might have cost him?

Çağan H. Şekercioğlu (2013). Citation opportunity cost of the high impact factor obsession Current Biology, 23 (17) DOI: 10.1016/j.cub.2013.07.065

Posted on September 10, 2013 at 10:39 4 Comments
Sep06

Retiring from science?

In: news • Tags: , ,

I just got the nicest decline to review ever:

After more than 40 years at university with work weeks of 60-70 hours, I retired in 2010 and decided to limit work to 40 hours per week, concentrate on what I really like (=work with my students) and take more time for music and literature. One of the activities I terminated was reviewing research papers and grant proposals. I have reviewed hundreds of papers and grant proposals during my career and feel that I have contributed sufficiently. So please find another reviewer for this paper or research grant proposal.
That’s how you retire from science: you get to work like normal people. Awesome!
Posted on September 6, 2013 at 17:23 1 Comment
Sep05

Special issue on publishing reform?

In: news • Tags: , , , , ,

I’ve just been invited to edit a special issue in the MDPI journal ‘publications‘ on a topic I can specify. If I do it, I thought it should revolve around replacing journal rank (i.e., altmetrics, ALM, etc.) and other (technical?) means to transcend a journal-based literature towards a coherent knowledge-dissemination infrastructure that incorporates of course text, but also software and data. Perhaps some topics could be: modern assessment and quality control methodology; open research data management, archiving and integration; management of scientific software; integration of text, software and data; authoring technology. What is the current state of the art and what is most likely to be developed in the near future, what are people working on right now?

However, I’m a little hesitant as I don’t have any experience with the publisher nor the journal. I can see that Heather Morrison has published in there, but that’s about it.

I also wonder as to which authors would be interested in contributing what to such a special issue?

What do you think, should I do it? Do you think anybody would be interesting in reading these articles?  If so, would you be interested in contributing? Then let me know in the comments. Please feel free to circulate this request wherever you see fit. I’m not sure I’m the right guy, but I’d let myself be convinced to try it anyway 🙂

UPDATE: I’ve now read some conflicting information about the publisher. On the one hand, Grant Steen is organizing a special topic on misconduct in the same journal, on the other hand, there are a number of truly outrageous stories for some papers in other journals. I guess one can see this as the usual mix any publisher is offering? 🙂 I mean, let the publisher without any outrageously insane papers cast the first stone 🙂

UPDTAE2: Awesome, people are sending me all kinds of information. I just learned of another cool special issue in this journal on open access (via Heinz Pampel). Two authors have so far also volunteered to contribute in case it happens.

Posted on September 5, 2013 at 12:41 Comments Off on Special issue on publishing reform?
Sep05

Video: Free will as an evolved brain function

In: random science video • Tags: , , , , ,

It is one of these rare events when I can post a video of one of my own talks. This one was in Berlin earlier this year, organized by The Lost Lectures in a very unusual venue, the Stattbad Wedding:

I’m planning to work more closely together with our computing center here to be able to record at least the lectures I give in English here at the university. So maybe there will be some more videos here, soon.

Posted on September 5, 2013 at 12:21 Comments Off on Video: Free will as an evolved brain function