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Showing posts from January, 2015

Gestating a human takes less time than publishing a paper

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Long have scientists ranted about the arbitrary and lengthy process of peer review (see a great post on what is wrong with peer review by Michael Eisen ).  Now it's my turn, alright ? What is supposed to happen during peer review (an evaluation of the merits of the paper, an assessment of novelty/impact, and constructive criticism of the science) can happen.  But this is a story about how it failed, in one particular way.  A story, in three parts (three rounds of reviews) -- about how it will take me less time to create a fully formed human being than it will take to publish this manuscript. Part I: Submitting a manuscript to PLoS Pathogens We've got some exciting new work coming out of the lab -- I won't be shy about it.  We've discovered an interesting interaction between Drosophila actin and Wolbachia.   We had several lines of evidence to support our conclusions (immunohistochemistry + microscopy, western blots, PCR) and so submitted a presubmission inquiry to