The System of Scientific publishing

I would say that there is bound to be some degree, because the system is run by fallible humans.Certainly the claim that it is easier to put a claim out there than to counter it is true. Indeed even when a piece of research has been genuinely shown to be severely flawed, even to the point of being retracted, it can still continue to be referenced for decades. Sadly people often aren't as scrupulous as they should be, and I'd hold my hand up to this, and don't read all of the papers they cite in full. I have more than once referenced something on the basis of a recommendation, or a citation in another paper, followed by a brief scan of an abstract, introduction and conclusion without going through all of the data.I'm not sure that all of the authors suggestions are feasible, or in some cases desirable, but the one about the data being available for review is a very important one that I would agree with wholeheartedly. Unfortunately without some sort of centralised facility for hosting such data I'm not sure how feasible it is. If a lab host the data on their own site it is liable to disappear if they change institute. In many cases journals do make it a requirement that data is submitted to open data repositories, but that doesn't always work out and the journals may simply accept assurances or fail to check that the deposition has gone through.Have to say, I'm not sure why he goes through all the rigmarole of anonymising everyone involved only to link to his comment paper so we know all the key players anyway.TTFN,WK

In this case the comment certainly was peer reviewed. Different journals approach these things differently, but it certainly struck me that with the amount of time invested in organising and getting the comment published he would have been as well try to present it as a new paper in and of itself if it could be framed that way.The main problem as I see it is not with the journal, although the tedious rounds of redrafting and revision can be arduous in any case, but with the authors of the first article. Their reluctance to provide the necessary data for checking really undermines their credibility. It is perfectly reasonable to jealously guard your data up to a point, but that point should be when the data is published, after that it should be available for scrutiny.The furthest alternative is probably a system such as that used by PLOS One where anyone can comment on a paper, or even a specific section of a paper, as one might a youtube video.TTFN,WK

As Trebino presents it it isn't a case of them presenting a novel alternative methodology but rather that they claim that FROG in fact does not work properly. Indeed the alternative methodology in question, auto-correlation, seems considerably older.If people accept this at face value then they would stop using FROG, which understandably Trebino is against.TTFN,WK

Given how long this article is and that the relevant bit comes towards the end it might help to have a brief precis of the suggestions Trebino makes. My view ...1. As I said already I agree with this one.2. I think this is a fairly unsupportable position, you could contradict the work of dozens of labs if you overturn a popular line of research. All Trebino seems to want to do here is to shift the onus from the position he was in to that of the other party, which might serve to retard criticism just as effectively.3. Not liking someone isn't a conflict of interest. The better way around this , if it is required, would be to double blind the review so the reviewers not know who the authors are.4 and 7 I'll take together. This seems like a pretty contradictory pair, if the reviewers of the comment are best qualified to review the reply then why is the editor of the original article disqualified. This should at least be consistent and require a new set of reviewers for each article.5. This obviously makes sense, but you reach a point where a simple comment is clearly not the appropriate type of response.6. This seems reasonable to some extent. I would go for a statement in the journal to that effect. I don't agree with the timing issue. Things are already bad enough with people failing to pick up comments and retractions, putting comments and replies together like this minimises this problem.8. This is just thin skinned, authors can say what they like in their response to a reviewer and what they say reflects on them in the same way what the reviewer writes reflects on them. If the editor can't appropriately judge the reviewer's comments then the problem is the editor.9. I don't agree with this, nor do I see how it would improve things.10. Now he's just getting personal. Also I'm not sure how he magically expects editors to be able to determine what constitutes the truth.11. This is mostly dealt with at an institutional level although there are already bodies such as the Office of Research Integrity in the US.12. I agree with this one, but I don't think it would necessarily solve the problem, I doubt that in most cases the people indulging in unethical behaviour don't know it.TTFN,WK