Nature Blogs

I may have a bit of excessive taste for melodrama, please forgive.

In my experience, most scientists who are qualified to review a paper will be able to infer the name of the researcher behind it, based solely on the content.

Your point isn't just anecdotal, the original Nature editorial mentions a study: "Referees could identify at least one of the authors on about 40% of the papers, undermining the raison d'être for double-blinding."

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v451/n7179/full/451605b.html#B1

But sexism is probably a problem with female names one doesn't recognize, not females whose work one is familiar with (anecdotal, but I'm sure I could find studies on prejudice/discrimination), so double-blind review would still help.

Still, we're talking on different premises: I think it's important both for publishers to strive for fairness in publishing and for researchers to demand a unceasing effort towards general progress in publishing. The real problem is a lack of dedication to thought about the best way to organize research, which, if I understand correctly, is the biggest value added by the journals. Why is it that the closest thing to thinking about organizing research on a macro level is one of Nature's 17 blogs (is it really just as important as the Avian Flu)?

http://blogs.nature.com/

Why is there so little thought about how it is we organize our research? Is it just because old business models stand in the way? Is it because those that benefit from the…

Let's go point by point.

1) Regarding diabetes and the FDA:

I don't think removing the FDA is going to find a cure for
diabetes.

Well, before the FDA as such even existed, Banting and Best came up with the idea for insulin supplementation in 1921. A patient was treated by 1922. They won the Nobel Prize by 1923. Today's FDA would have made their methods completely impossible and they would have been criminally prosecuted.

http://www.nobelprize.org/educational/medicine/insulin/discovery-insulin.html

Early in 1921, Banting took his idea to Professor John
Macleod at the University of Toronto, who was a leading
figure in the study of diabetes in Canada. Macleod didn't
think much of Banting's theories. Despite this, Banting
managed to convince him that his idea was worth trying.

In January 1922 in Toronto, Canada, a 14-year-old boy,
Leonard Thompson, was chosen as the first person with
diabetes to receive insulin. The test was a success.
Leonard, who before the insulin shots was near death,
rapidly regained his strength and appetite. The team now
expanded their testing to other volunteer diabetics, who
reacted just as positively as Leonard to the insulin
extract.

The news of the successful treatment of diabetes with
insulin rapidly spread outside of Toronto, and in 1923 the
Nobel Committee decided to award Banting and Macleod the
Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.

Point: the FDA need not exist to make progress…

So what's the prevailing wisdom today about the Hannah Poling case?

...the government’s Division of Vaccine Injury Compensation concluded that five shots Hannah received in July 2000, when she was 19 months old, “significantly aggravated an underlying mitochondrial disorder” and resulted in a brain disorder “with features of autism spectrum disorder.”

http://www.ajc.com/health/content/health/stories/2008/03/06/autism_0306.html

Records were sealed at the time. Don't know if they have since been released.

EDIT: Summary of latest news, 2010-09-11:

US Vaccine Injury Compensation Program (VICP) will pay over $1.5 million to the family of a child whose parents allege acquired autism after routine vaccinations in 2000....However, the payment does not acknowledge a vaccine-autism link.

http://blogs.nature.com/news/thegreatbeyond/2010/09/us_vaccine_payout_provokes_con.html

The 27 August 2010 Decision Regarding Damages: http://www.uscfc.uscourts.gov/sites/default/files/CAMPBELLSMITH.%20DOE77082710.pdf

EDIT 2: You can't make this stuff up:

Then-director of the Centers for Disease Control Julie Gerberding (who is now President of Merck Vaccines) stated: "The government has made absolutely no statement indicating that vaccines are a cause of autism. This does not represent anything other than a very specific situation and a very sad situation as far as the family of the affected child."

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-31727_162-20015982-10391695.html

in part it's more dangerous than correction or passive braking system because you need a high twr motor and the explosive to go with it to have a way to correct for unforeseen consequences.

see what happened with philae, they got two redundant system to land and both failed.

if the scan reveal pluto to have an usable atmosphere, it will be much much easier to land

however, if you look at the trajectory they used it's an orthogonal encounter [1]

that means the speed they have relative one another is quite much more than when you approach calmly from behind using a hoffman transfer or the like - however if you go that route, instead of waiting 10 years you have to wait a load more, probably more like hundreds (exactly what they did with phila, they approached from the closest orbit possible to minimize the correction burn needed [2])

and let us not forget that having anything in space surviving for soo long is a challenge by itself, as having equipment on earth funded for so long to be maintained operational - remember this story about the other spacecraft that was sent to a comet flyby and was out of gas due leaks on its way back? [3] they had to work a great deal just to rebuild the communication equipement in time

[1] https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/cb/New_Horizons_Full_Trajectory_Sideview.png
[2] http://i.imgur.com/TUkKuhf.gif
[3] http://blogs.nature.com/news/2014/07/attempt-to-retrieve-nasa-probe-runs-out-of-gas.html

The NIH open access policy is being expanded to nearly all US Government-funded research (including NSF, DOE and NASA): http://blogs.nature.com/news/2013/02/us-white-house-announces-open-access-policy.html

Similar policies are or soon will be in place at many of the largest grant agencies in other countries (Wellcome Trust, the UK Research Councils, etc), and more are coming online. I expect we'll see this become near-universal by the end of the decade.

The Gates policy is unusual in that it has no embargo period. That's not true of many of the other policies, including the NIH policy and the broader US policy. It'll be interesting to see if Gates causes other grant agencies to shorten or eliminate their embargo periods.

Another unusual feature of the Gates policy: it requires a CC-BY license on the paper. That means that, at least in principle, some other publisher could simply republish the paper immediately, perhaps enriching it in various ways. It's a very interesting move.

Incidentally, if anyone is interested: the best source of news about open access is Peter Suber's open access tracking project. It can be followed on Twitter at @oatp. Another good account is @SPARC_NA - SPARC has done a lot of the ground work preparing the way for open access policies.

“Our study indicates that a disturbingly high
proportion of parents, > 1 in 5, continue to believe
that some vaccines cause autism in otherwise healthy
children”

This is actually a big problem and a symptom of the difficulty of explaining science to the general public. There are dozens of papers that prove otherwise, the original paper that made this claim has been withdrawn after being proven erroneous:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/8493753.stm

http://blogs.nature.com/news/thegreatbeyond/2010/02/lancet_retracts_mmr_doctors_pa.html

The Lancet's editor, Richard Horton, tells the
Guardian that when he read the GMC ruling, it became
clear that statements in the paper were "utterly
false" and that he felt "deceived".

http://press.thelancet.com/wakefieldretraction.pdf

and yet this message doesn't seem to get through to people. The reduction in vaccination is (at least part) of what is behind several of the outbreaks mentioned in the article and the increased incidence of several diseases that had practically been eradicated.