Peer Review of Social Science Research in Global Health

A new working paper by Victoria Fan, Rachel Silverman, David Roodman, and William Savedoff at the Center for Global Development. Abstract In recent years, the interdisciplinary nature of global health has blurred the lines between medicine and social science. As medical journals publish non-experimental research articles on social policies or macro-level interventions, controversies…

What can be done to prevent the proliferation of errors in academic publications?

Every now and again a paper is published on the number of errors made in academic articles. These papers document the frequency of conceptual errors, factual errors, errors in abstracts, errors in quotations, and errors in reference lists. James Hartley reports that the data are alarming, but suggests a possible way of…

Flawed Research On Your Plate

You might want to reconsider paying extra dollar for these fish oil supplements. A new study said most of the research literature on the cardiovascular benefits of omega-3 fatty acids is flawed. In the early 1970s, two Danish researchers started to investigate the diet of Greenland’s Inuit populations, which were believed to live longer than their Caucasian counterparts. The study…

When is an error not an error?

Guest post by Annette N. Brown and Benjamin D. K. Wood on the World Bank Development Impact blog: We are seeing a similar propensity for replication researchers to use the word “error” (or “mistake” or “wrong”) and for this language to cause contentious discussions between the original authors and replication researchers. The…