Reports are appearing in a number of main stream media outlets of an apparent breakthrough in the search for a ‘flu vaccine that is universal i.e. that is active against all strains of influenza. That’s important news and could eventually have widespread implications for public health (and probably make someone rather rich).

Some examples of the reports appearing are from The Guardian, Press Association, The Daily Telegraph and MSNBC. The story was originally broken by Alok Jha at the Guardian yesterday (Sunday). It is currently spreading across the net. It is a good piece and Alok should be congratulated on the amount of detail he has documented in the article.

There is one problem. There is no link to the original academic paper describing the data that appears in the article (i.e. the results of a Phase II study about effects). The links that are present refer us to the results of a new Phase I study (about safety) and a commentary. This lack of link to the original research referred to in the article is not unusual. We have discussed why this is a problem before and why it is probably a function of the embargo system.

What is unusual in this case is the length of time we will apparently have to wait before we can actually read the paper. According to Alok himself, the academic paper is, as yet, unpublished. We also contacted Dr Sarah Gilbert, who is leading the research, and she confirmed that no date was set for publication of the study.

The issues here are numerous. We can’t make a judgment about the quality of the science until is it published for one. Next, the paper might not be under peer review or still be under peer review (see this, this and this for other commentators’ opinion) with the risk that it has not been accepted yet. For all we know, there could be multiple issues with the work. We also can’t judge potential conflicts of interest. Who funded it? Who stands to benefit financially? We should not accuse the authors or their institutions of any dodgy practices (far from it, this is The University of Oxford) but, as it stands, we are simply left in the dark.

So, to summarise, we can get a glimpse of the ongoing research by inspecting the Phase I study which is good. But then we have to read the newspapers to find out about the (more important) study on the effects of the treatment. There has to be something odd with that.  It is one thing getting widespread media coverage of such apparently important research (that’s good), but if we can’t actually judge the science on its merits, it is a problem. Sorry, but a major newspaper is not a peer reviewed scientific journal and it is not the place to try and publish original research.

It is now time for whatever journal is involved to get this paper out quickly.

Here’s the opening paragraph of the announcement:

“The Committee has today launched an inquiry into peer review. The committee invites evidence on the operation and effectiveness of the peer review process used to examine and validate scientific results and papers prior to publication.” Dated 27th January 2010.

As they say in their announcement they are looking for submissions on all aspects of the process including its strengths and weaknesses, its value, how reviewers are selected, if the process differs across the globe, the role of IT in the process and whether there are alternatives to peer review. Wide ranging stuff.

They also say that they will examine “the value and use of peer review in informing public debate.” Now that does sound like an interesting can of worms to have look into. Will they find a rosey picture of loveliness? Or will they find an ugly secret war of scientific words and stifled debate?

It’s not as if we haven’t been here before. New Scientist debated the issues surrounding peer review in an editorial last year (subscription required – sorry).  They highlighted the apparent disparities between US stem cell researchers getting published quicker and in higher impact journals than non-US stem cell researchers.

Whilst they admitted that this pattern could be related to all manner of things, including the point that the American’s might simply be doing better research with stem cells, there are still legitimate concerns.

The obvious point is that there is a risk only one side of the story is getting heard – that of the “in-crowd” – the well funded, top level science rock stars that genuinely ‘lead’ a scientific area. They will have a consensus of opinion based on years of research and publications. They won’t agree on everything but they will agree on most things.

Now, what happens when a manuscript comes along that goes against the consensus? Do we get to hear about it?

Well, imagine this situation. A new well funded group in say, China tries to publish a paper that challenges the scientific consensus of the day. It is well written, high quality work and deserves publication in a high impact journal.  It goes out to review, only to land on the desk of a member of that elite club, the in-crowd. The reviewer sees the power of their arguments and realises that they might actually be right. He also realises that if this gets out and gains momentum, there would be a risk to his future funding and career prospects. He will make all efforts possible to pick holes in it, delay the review and come up with powerful arguments to get the journal to reject it. The paper will eventually get out, but in a much lower impact journal and much later than it would have done.

Obviously this would be an exceptional case but the risk of bias and the conflicts of interest are clear to see. Do we ever get the chance to see this in action? Not really, because the power of peer review is in its anonymity. Scientists are at liberty to critically review the work without fear of retribution from peers. It is a powerful system that has been around for years and that everyone knows is open to abuse. The checks and balances in the system are lacking because it is very rare that we ever get to see the reviewers comments… except when we are on the receiving end of them.

As the New Scientist pointed out, the solution could be complete disclosure of the review process. Tricky as this might put off some scientists from participating in peer review. Meanwhile, a compromise has been suggested by a group of peeved European stem cell biologists – partial disclosure. Publish the referees’ comments and communications as supplementary material but redact the names. It all sounds rather familiar but I’m guessing Wikileaks have a bit too much on their plate to get involved right now.

There is also the question of whether post publication peer review will make a difference. We’ve seen what happens when peer review gets an airing in public – ‘alien’ bacteria and a massive communications balls up.

If the MPs make this proposal in their review it will add to the growing voices demanding change in the peer review system. It also means that science will become an uglier place to navigate for scientists.

For those that make a living out of talking about science, the journalists and bloggers, it will be a field day.

Blogging about science is a hot topic these days. Aside from the raging debates about whether it can adequately replace science journalism or support it, can blogging about your science seriously affect your career prospects?

According to this new analysis by Vivienne Raper, appearing in Science’s Career Magazine… it depends on how you use a blog. As we have seen in our previous post, blogs can be powerful communications tools that can be used to successfully reach out to the public via the media.

It is clear, however, that not all academics see this benefit. Blogs might help, but many institutions value research output above all else as the main factor in career progress. That is also a fair point.  Blogs in this case, might be viewed by superiors as no more than a hobby or at worse a distraction from the day job. That might not be so good for your career but we can sort of see their point of view.

However, the major highlight from this article (for us) is the case of Greg Gbur who blogs here. According to Gbur, he has found that blogging has helped him in his career after receiving “good scores” for “broader impact” assessments in grant applications submitted to the US National Science Foundation (NSF). That is an important point because “broader impact” is one of two categories the NSF use to make funding decisions. According to the article, NSF spokesperson Bobbie Mixon has said “blogging would be considered a broader impact… depending on the specific proposal.”

Assuming that grant applications actually get funded, we think any efforts to promote your science (be it blogging or shouting from the roof tops about science), is a good idea if it helps to keep your research funded and you in a job. Many institutions say they value research output. We will guarantee you that they love it when you bring in the grants and the cold hard cash.

We suggest you read the rest of the article as it contains a very balanced consideration of the do’s and don’t's of blogging and how it might enhance or hinder your career prospects.

Links

Why and how to communicate your research – Dr Frank Burnet

Taking Science to People – Dr Frank Burnet

Science of Blogging

A new blog, appropriately called the Science of Blogging, promises to highlight how and why all scientists should be… blogging. Here’s the detail.Promoting and communicating science is what we do at 24 Media Labs and so it’s always great to hear about new initiatives from entrepreneurial scientists trying to do things a bit differently. Peter Janiszewski (and here) (PhD) and Travis Saunders (PhD in waiting) started Science of Blogging in November 2010 and it seems to be hitting a rather positive nerve (may be to the apparent surprise of the authors).

The how part of the blog is good stuff with plenty of tips and tricks posted already. I love the recent post of Travis Saunders arguing that if you can write an email, then you can write a blog. A very valid observation. There’s also some neat advice on starting a blog, promoting your blog, whether to write under a pseudonym, and what makes a blog successful. This is all very interesting and I, for one, hope they continue dishing this advice out.

The bit that I’m really interested in is the ‘why’. I have previously said that this blog will be all about how to promote science in the media. It seems that Science of Blogging has already given us a great first example of why this is so important. And, you might be surprised by their story.

Two years ago, Peter and Travis set up this blog on obesity research. One of the drivers for doing this was that they were getting royally ticked off with doing decent science, publishing it and… nothing. That was it. No reaction, no press, just silence.

One example is this paper which was published in Diabetes Care. This is a fairly prestigious journal to get published in. Now, despite this achievement, promoting it at conferences, and having a message that is seemingly rather important to the field, it apparently met with near silence from the scientific community (in terms of citations) and the press (in terms of articles). There is nothing unusual in this but annoying if you feel that your message is important.

After getting the paper published in June 2010, they produced this 5-part series on the topic on their blog (now hosted on PLoS blogs) in September 2010 to try to get a bit more publicity. This, apparently, led to just over 12,000 page views and over 70 comments in one week.  That is a serious achievement in terms of knowledge translation. As they point out, publishing in a prestigious journal basically made no impact until they decided to start discussing it online a few months later.

It does not end there. After digging around a bit, we’ve found further mentions, blog posts and news articles relating to the paper here, here, here, here and here. And, of course, there is also the article at MSNBC which certainly helped push the message further in October 2010.

You might say, so what? And you might well feel that no press is good news. No stress of interviews, no journalists knocking on your lab door, no hassles from your superiors etc etc. Well that is fine, but friends, think of this. Knowledge translation, outreach and communications are starting to become a very serious driver of funding bodies. If you have a demonstrated track record of publishing work that has received media attention, it will help you win that next prestigious grant, which will keep you in your job.

The next question is obviously how this experience has impacted on the citation record of the paper. We’ll deal with that another time.

This annual event promises to dig deep into the online world asking what science can do to leverage the internet, crowd power, blogs, twitter and all the rest of the tech we hear about every day. As with many areas of industry and commerce, the internet is turning upside down old business models, communications and institutional power. It’s asking probing questions of how we communicate with each other, who we communicate with and with how many. Science can benefit and this conference promises to highlight some of the new ways scientists, their funders, the journalists, the bloggers and the people formerly known as the audience/public are interacting and operating in this brave new world.

Registrations for Science Online London 2011 are not open yet (apparently we have to wait a few more months) but at least you can now mark the date in your diary with a big fat marker pen (we have).

Power Balance Wrist Band

Pseudo-science can sometimes teach us a few things about communicating real science – particularly when it gets a proper chewing from a government agency and a bunch of  journalists. We take a look at Power Balance and what they are doing to protect themselves from a good dose of negative attention. It’s all a bit ugly.

Have you heard the one about a wrist band with a hologram that can improve your balance, strength and flexibility? Evidently Club Celeb has. Spotted recently… the England Cricket Team, the Dutch Football Squad (oh is that why they did so well in the World Cup?), a future queen, a bunch of actors and David Beckham… all wearing Power Balance bands.

What are they claiming?

Power Balance claim that their hologram-containing wristband is designed to “resonate with and respond to the natural energy field of the body”. We’ll leave you to make a judgment about what that really means.

It’s apparently enough for the celebrity world. They have a LOT of celebrities, athletes, and other sports stars endorsing the product claiming that it helps their balance, strength and flexibility. In industry speak that is known as indirect marketing and it looks like they have made a real effort to encourage this.

How does the product work?

Well again, according to Power Balance LLC, “the Mylar material at the core of Power Balance has been treated with energy waves at specific frequencies. The resulting Mylar is believed to resonate and work with your body’s natural energy flow to help enable you to perform at the best of your ability”.  And here is the “proof” that the product works (according to Power Balance LLC):

Now, we are not about to debate the merits, or otherwise, of the scientific evidence behind this product (trust us, we could). Plenty of others have (here, here and here) and unless there is some secret scientific literature only available to celebrities and this company, we will errr on the side of caution, agree with the critics, wait for clinical studies to be published, and side with the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) who, this week it emerged, have completely rubbished any credibility this product might have had.

We also note that the BBC have commissioned some actual scientific research on this and they report (journalist-style) that the product is no more effective than a placebo. For our part, we do encourage the researchers and the BBC to publish this study in the normal channels (i.e. via a peer reviewed scientific journal).

How are they talking about it?

What is interesting about this story is Power Balance LLC have openly admitted in Australia, that they have no scientific evidence to support any claims that they, or others are (still) making about their products and that they engaged in misleading conduct.

That, is very very rare indeed.

You will normally see companies fight tooth and nail to defend their products even in the face of overwhelming evidence against them and/or their products’ claims.

To their credit, they equally claim that they are working very hard to re-dress all “marketing errors”. Fine. But, that is a brave assertion for a company with one offering who rely on a myriad of celebrity supporters claiming miracle things as a result of using their product.

The point to watch though is how they are talking about the product in other countries around the world. Let’s take the US. According to a statement from the president of Power Balance LLC, Keith Kato, “Power Balance has not made a statement that our product is ineffective. This is simply untrue.” In the UK, there is a similar statement and here it is in Belgium. On Facebook there is a very simple assertion: “Power Balance works we guarantee it.”

They claim they do have evidence that their product is effective (para 5 – accessed 8th January 2011). For the sake of posterity, here is the US press statement where they say that “a preliminary study, conducted by an independent third-party, was recently commissioned to determine the different performance variables of the product and the findings have determined that wearing the product does in fact provide a “statistically significant” result on the wearer’s performance.” (quote taken from here 8th January 2011 but check this post to get a balanced view).

Now we’re talking. What they need to do is publish this data quickly. It might well help them save their credibility, business and defend themselves in a class action law suite that has recently appeared in the US.

Power Balance is apparently a $35 million dollar business and we’re left wondering whether it will be worth anything at the end of 2011 (maybe after the lawyers have had their turn).

What can we learn in terms of promoting and communicating science?

• Make sure you have the scientific evidence before talking about it,
• Publish your evidence before marketing it,
• Celebrity endorsement is very, very powerful,
• Video evidence is engaging but make sure it checks out,
• AND, above all, consistency in your message needs to be maintained – globally.

Why are we going to follow this story?

Power Balance LLC might have celeb status endorsement but they are going to have to be really clever in 2011 in dealing with continuing criticism from the press, government and the courts and keep a business going around it. We think there will be some lessons to be learned this year in terms of communicating a “scientific basis” of a product… or not. We will see.

Prize draw: If you can prove scientifically in a peer reviewed journal that the Power Balance band can improve balance, strength and flexibility you will be the proud owner of a shiny new power balan… answers on a e-postcard please.

Credit: pasukaru76 Flickr

Just picked up a free-ish crystal ball in the January sales, so let’s take a look at what 2011 might mean for science communications and promoting science in the media. Here’s a clue: blogs, post publication peer review, open access and shouting a bit louder will mean that science will get (a bit) free-er to access and use. Here’s our pick of trends for 2011.

The 21st Century just turned into a teenager. We’re expecting it will be a moodier, spottier, more out-spoken world and science will be the same. The youthful internet is getting cleverer and science needs to understand that to be heard you need to shout loud… REALLY LOUD. We’re expecting plenty of scientific entrepreneurial endeavor and it will be fun to watch.

A scientific blogolicious, tweetup: It’s coming fast. Scientists have been blogging, tweeting, FB-ing and building websites for a while but 2011, we think, will be the year that Science 2.0/3.0 will balloon into a functioning reality worth taking note of. Why? 2010 saw the first verifiable open post publication peer review across numerous outlets (more later on this), conferences are now receiving full coverage via Twitter (whether organisers like it or not) and self archiving of academic content is a reality (even if it is a bit of thumb to the nose of publishers). All this self publishing will mean free (-er) access to scientific content.

Open access publishing: This has been around for a while but 2010 saw some significant momentum building as scientists realised that it can be rather helpful to their careers. We think new publishers such as PLoS will really blossom in 2011 and get an increasing share of media coverage. Traditional publishers will go more and more towards this style of business model. Those that don’t will start to struggle. And, scientists that don’t publish in open access journals will start noticing the difference in their funding. Of course, without the shackles of pay walls, everyone gets greater access to the content.

Post publication peer review: A tongue twister but 2010 saw the first verifiable open peer reviewed tongue lashing (here for one of the autopsies) of a publication in Science and a subsequent media storm reminiscent of previous “discoveries” of ET. There will be more of this – much more.

The Embargo system: Despite criticism, this will still be around. Thousands of press releases will still be released this year and journalists will still complain about the number of them in their inboxes. But, will the system still have such an influence in this new reality?

Science Journalism: You might think it’s dead, dying, hung-over or maybe in tip top condition but we will still see glimpses of genius writing and no doubt plenty of same old, same old claims that celery will make you immortal (or whatever else). But, will it come from your favorite (tabloid) journalists or the new kids on the block – the science bloggers?

WikiLeaks: Whether you agree or not with what or how it happened, we are probably set to learn a bit more about dodgy dealings around climate change and probably a bit more about medical ethics and Big Pharma.

Scientific Information Overload and Promoting Science: We’ve seen claims of 75 clinical studies being published every day and estimates of 2.5 million academic articles being published every year. Will there be more this year? Probably. And how, in the midst of this ocean of information, can we sift the quality scientific wheat from the noisy chaff. By the end of the year, we hope to know.

So, a few predictions for 2011. Let’s see how we get on and whether science actually starts growing up with some freedom from the past.

Credit: SparkCBC, Flickr

As many of you will probably ask this question: why are you blogging about promoting science… we thought we’d answer it straight away. The world of science (communications) is changing, there is a scientific information overload and the reality is now more about who shouts loudest rather than who has the best scientific discoveries up their sleeves. Read on to find out what we’re talking about.

Back in October I found myself wondering out loud why science journalism can sometimes resemble a game of chinese whispers. You know, the story cycle starts by talking about new apple varieties and ends with proving sheep (Uh??).

It all seemed to come down to one thing: journalists writing stories on science discoveries they don’t really understand because they haven’t actually read the scientific paper and have just quoted the press release or their competitor outlets because they couldn’t possibly be seen to have not reported the same thing as the competition because there is this unwritten rule that science news coverage must be stage managed and homogenous across all outlets except blogs were all the interesting analysis takes place because it’s written by scientists who actually understand the science, don’t care for rigid academic procedures and peer review of scientific discussion and just want to get their qualified opinion out to the public (and breath).

Since that time, it seemed like a good idea to find out why this state of affairs exists and what is being done about it. The motivation is quite simple. 24 Media Labs is a nascent science communications agency run by scientists for scientists. If we are going to help scientists communicate their science to the wider world we’d better know how to do it (don’t worry, we have figured that bit out) and especially in the wired world of the internet. This blog is the place where we will share our adventure, discoveries and thoughts on how to manage in this new reality.

Information Overload

Our brief peak under the bonnet (a.k.a. market research) has so far revealed a fragile system of information flow that is build for a pre-internet age, that is overloaded and is only slowly changing for this new wired reality. We will document all this evidence in the coming weeks and months. Is the system broken? Not yet, but it might well be on the edge. Some thoughts which we will elaborate on in the coming months:

• Scientists: would it worry (please) you to know that the chances of getting any media coverage for your shiny new academic publication are virtually ZERO?
• Scientists: would it also worry you that some funding sources have started to look at how you have previously communicated your science with the media and the public? Worried yet?
• PR people: The press release is pointless. The chances of your carefully worded infomercial getting any air time are nearly ZERO in the new wired reality.
• Journalists: Newsworthy stories do exist in journals other than Nature, Science and The Lancet. However, your chances of finding them are nearly ZERO. Good stories also exist elsewhere if you look and can cope without embargoes.
• The man on the street: You are only hearing about a tiny fraction of scientific endeavour, which you have probably paid for through your tax bill. Does it concern you where your tax euro-dollar-pounds are going and what is being discovered with them?

Summary: Systemic information overload (which we will present on this blog) means that scientists need to be creative, opinionated, loud and entrepreneurial to get heard by the media and by the public. As a scientist, you may well have the biggest scientific discovery to date, but to get heard above the information noise and on a changing media landscape, you are going to have to shout very loud indeed.

Our aims: This blog will document as many ways as we can think of to promote science in the new wired reality. We’ll also need your help to highlight new ways of promoting science and success stories of the day. We’ll cover traditional methods of promotion and more modern approaches. We will document, discuss and challenge all the different ways scientists are using to promote science and we will wonder out loud about the state of the media and what can be done to fix it.

Joining us for the adventure?