BMJ papers could include honesty box for research warts
http://www.100md.com
《英国医生杂志》
EDITOR—The BMJ includes a small box with each paper, summarising the prior knowledge and what the study adds. This is laudable, but inevitably overlaps with the abstract. We suggest an alternative use for a box. We are torn between calling it an honesty box or a confessional box.
The idea is that all research has warts, some ugly, others less so. The ugly ones should be picked up by peer review. The less ugly ones are never seen, remaining only as a twinge of guilt in the researcher's conscience.
Possible examples are:
"Our power calculation—though justified by the literature—was optimistic"
"Reference 13 covers similar ground to our study, and we did not know it was in progress when we planned ours"
"We didn't expect finding B, and did the literature search on it after it was discovered."
The idea is that all research has warts, some ugly, others less so. The ugly ones should be picked up by peer review. The less ugly ones are never seen, remaining only as a twinge of guilt in the researcher's conscience.
Possible examples are:
"Our power calculation—though justified by the literature—was optimistic"
"Reference 13 covers similar ground to our study, and we did not know it was in progress when we planned ours"
"We didn't expect finding B, and did the literature search on it after it was discovered."