research work is novel or not

Is novel research worth doing? Evidence from peer review at 49 journals

Affiliations.

• 1 School of Information, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI 48109.
• 2 Laboratory for Innovation Science at Harvard, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 02138.
• 3 Harvard Business School, Boston, MA 02163.
• 4 Digital, Data and Design Institute, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 02138.
• PMID: 36395142
• PMCID: PMC9704701
• DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2118046119

There are long-standing concerns that peer review, which is foundational to scientific institutions like journals and funding agencies, favors conservative ideas over novel ones. We investigate the association between novelty and the acceptance of manuscripts submitted to a large sample of scientific journals. The data cover 20,538 manuscripts submitted between 2013 and 2018 to the journals Cell and Cell Reports and 6,785 manuscripts submitted in 2018 to 47 journals published by the Institute of Physics Publishing . Following previous work that found that a balance of novel and conventional ideas predicts citation impact, we measure the novelty and conventionality of manuscripts by the atypicality of combinations of journals in their reference lists, taking the 90th percentile most atypical combination as "novelty" and the 50th percentile as "conventionality." We find that higher novelty is consistently associated with higher acceptance; submissions in the top novelty quintile are 6.5 percentage points more likely than bottom quintile ones to get accepted. Higher conventionality is also associated with acceptance (+16.3% top-bottom quintile difference). Disagreement among peer reviewers was not systematically related to submission novelty or conventionality, and editors select strongly for novelty even conditional on reviewers' recommendations (+7.0% top-bottom quintile difference). Manuscripts exhibiting higher novelty were more highly cited. Overall, the findings suggest that journal peer review favors novel research that is well situated in the existing literature, incentivizing exploration in science and challenging the view that peer review is inherently antinovelty.

Keywords: bias; novelty; peer review; publishing.

Publication types

• Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't
• Peer Review, Research*
• Periodicals as Topic*

• Harvard Business School →
• Faculty & Research →
• November 22, 2022
• Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences

Is Novel Research Worth Doing? Evidence from Peer Review at 49 Journals

• Format: Print

About The Author

Karim R. Lakhani

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What has been is what will be, and what has been done is what will be done, and there is nothing new under the sun. — Ecclesiastes

Novelty can be described as the quality of being new, original or unusual . Novelty in scientific publishing is crucial, because journal editors and peer reviewers greatly prize novel research over and above confirmatory papers or research with negative results . After all, why give precious and limited journal space to something previously reported when authors submit novel, unreported discoveries?

How do you know what constitutes as novel? How can you as an academic author enhance the novelty effect with your research submissions ? Below we explore ideas that will help you maximise the novelty effect in your submissions.

a. New discovery

This comprises research on and reports of completely new discoveries. These can be new chemical elements, planets or other astrological phenomena, new species of flora or fauna, previously undiagnosed diseases, viruses etc. These are things never seen or reported before. Often such new discoveries serve as a seedbed for multiple reports or even completely new avenues of research. Journals prize submissions on new discoveries and often tout them in media reports.

b. The exceptionally rare

Not quite as exciting as new discoveries are reports on things not new, but seen or encountered exceptionally rarely, or not for a long time. An example is the sighting of the rare pink handfish, recently spotted in Australia for the first time in decades. In biomedical publishing , rare case reports of a near-unique condition (such as the separation of conjoined twins) are occasionally published and make the nightly news.

c. New theories

Typically, these papers provide substantial data which supports the novel thesis. Reports of new theories must have rigorous logic and need to stand on clear and well-documented foundations. They can’t be simple flights of theoretical fancy. As with new discoveries, new theories can spawn whole new branches of scientific inquiry.

d. New or significantly improved diagnostic/laboratory techniques

Reports on novel techniques don’t usually receive coverage from the mass media, but can often garner huge numbers of references if the new technique is adopted by the scientific community. Publication-worthy techniques include those which are more efficient, less time-consuming or more reliable than currently existing techniques or diagnostic procedures. Anything that is truly new or improves significantly on an established technique is potentially worthy of publication. In medicine, new surgical techniques are very important, but here’s a tip : try to provide a large prospective case series with long-term follow-up instead of a just a single case report.

e. Existing data combined into new knowledge

There is a profound novelty effect when researchers combine existing data/knowledge into something new. Ideas from disparate, previously unrelated fields of research can lead to completely novel discoveries with untold potential applications. Translational or applied research (particularly in the biomedical sciences) has borne abundant fruit over the last many decades. Translational applications of chemistry and physics to medicine have seen enormous advances in the diagnosis and treatment of numerous diseases.

f. Incremental additions to the literature

Not all research or publications will report on truly novel discoveries; in fact, very few will. But that doesn’t necessarily diminish the novelty effect of your work. The vast majority of published research adds incrementally to what is already known, nudging scientific knowledge forward. The accumulation of incremental discovery leads, over time, to large gains in understanding and knowledge.

How to ensure and verify the novelty effect

Whether your research reports something completely new or furthers an existing field in a new way, you need to make sure the contribution is indeed new.

• Do your homework : Pore through the literature (in as many languages as possible) to make sure your idea is indeed new, or significantly different enough to be considered new.
• To the degree possible, provide the ‘idea genealogy’ for your concept : Reference the major sources of those who have come before you. Through references and by describing your thought processes, describe clearly how you came up with the new idea or combination of ideas.
• Disclose your sources of inspiration and new application : Doing so constitutes academic honesty, gives credit to those upon whose shoulders your research rests and provides intellectual fertiliser for other scientists who may, in turn, be able to build upon your own ideas.

All the best for your (novel) submission!

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Is your work not novel enough?

by Geoffrey Ozin | Apr 21, 2020

Picture this: after months, possibly years of work, you and your colleagues decide to submit what you consider to be your most prized, original, and adventurous research contributions to an elite journal only to be told that it is not sufficiently innovative, significant, and technologically relevant. You and your colleague’s work is curiously dismissed as being “not novel enough”, “not a sufficient conceptual advance”, or “not of broad enough interest” to even make it past the editor’s desk for peer review.

This experience is all-too common to modern-day academics. Yet, these important works are somehow scientifically novel, important, and intriguing enough to qualify for peer-review in Tier 2 “sister” journals.

What constitutes novelty and importance? There are many examples of highly novel ideas that are unimportant. Conversely some very incremental advances are themselves highly important. Moreover, while novelty can be perhaps judged at a specific point in time, importance cannot.

Something very strange seems to be happening in the reputable science publishing houses. Seriously bold, exploratory work that aims to expand, enrich, and excite a field of scientific research rather than timorously adventure into incrementalism, are being pushed down to related business enterprises that are under the auspices of Tier 1 publishing groups.

Ask yourself what advanced exploratory work constitutes “visionary” or “breakthrough” or “boundary-breaking” ambitions, and which deserve rigorous peer evaluation by Tier 1 science publishers? Why are so many outstanding papers by distinguished minds, intent on challenging the prevailing view of the establishment, swept aside or cast into the “interesting work” yet “not sure it’s novel enough” pile?

How many times have you heard from an editor of an elite journal that there is overwhelming demand for the limited page space in the journal and 95% of all submissions never make it out of the starting gate?

Do you get the impression editors of these highest impact journals are drowning in their capacity to search for the next big thing buried in the crushing number of “breakthrough” research papers submitted for publication?

Global scientific output roughly doubles every nine years , and this paper tsunami, which can only get worse, poses an especially serious challenge for editors of leading journals acting as gatekeepers for which submissions to choose to send out for peer review. A proper evaluation of whether a paper meets the criteria of a “conceptual advance, beyond state-of-the-art, a radically new way of thinking, a technologically disruptive development”, must be extremely challenging for an editor simply because of the sheer volume of “frontier” work in disparate areas crossing their desks.

Also concerning is how this situation creates the perfect storm for gender biases — both conscious and unconscious — to play out, with female researchers being less likely than their male counterparts to use the term, “novel”, or other flattering language to describe their work and the diversity-innovation paradox in science.

Did you ever wonder whether the Matthew Effect of accrued benefit, expressed as “the rich get richer and poor get poorer” is intentionally or unintentionally influencing selection criteria at the peer review gate.

Maybe we need to rethink how and where we showcase our breakthroughs? Does it really have to be the highest impact factor journals? Is the motivation salary, promotion, and awards? Do the university ranking organizations need to rethink their models and criteria? Does our affair with the h-factor give a true value of creativity and innovation or does it merely relate to the ability to write a classical review article or an opinion piece or strategically publishing just your very best? 

Particularly affected by the current system are young scientists with the stress of the paper tsunami on the one hand and the demands of the university ranking organizations on the other. Sometimes they are not receiving the acknowledgement, tenure, and funding decisions they deserve because their papers do not find a home in the respected journals by which the university ranking organizations judge scientists. It equally challenges young investigators and students that are trying to understand this incredibly complicated moving target.

In a highly competitive educational business environment, more and more students (national and international) migrate to a university based on its global ranking. Is it time to rethink our values in higher education and place real science and social creativity as the key criteria in this sector rather than profit and loss?

Besides, for whom are we really doing the work, them or us? Are we not doing research for the joy of discovery, the exhilaration of unveiling the next big thing, the satisfaction of transforming an idea to a technology or social value, and the excitement of creating and sharing knowledge for the benefit of all? Does it really matter where great work ends up published? Even if the work does not make it to the elite journals, if it is great, there is a good chance it will receive the recognition it deserves by those in your field who matter — there are some interesting examples of extremely highly cited papers in obscure journals .

The system may have worked at one time, but now it seems that we need to look at whether it is serving the interests of any of the three stakeholders, namely, the scientists and innovators of the scientific community, the publishers and editors, and the university organizations.

A possible solution to the problem is for the three stakeholders to come together to work out a better and more effective solution to improve how the scholarly research of scientists and innovators is appraised, which will ultimately benefit society while giving a fair compensation to the publishers and meeting the legitimate requirements of funding agencies, professional societies and universities .

Now, the COVID-19 crisis has, for the first time in recent history, granted academics an opportunity to slow down their engines and look beyond the mass publishing frenzy. Rather than adamantly trying to maintain the previous pace of our research in the midst of a global pandemic, we academics might instead use this time to reflect and rethink the current systems under which we operate.

Should the impact of our research to society be limited by the judgement of elite journals? Should h-index and impact factor trump mentorship and community outreach in tenure evaluations? Will the traditional measures of excellence within academia even be relevant to future generations? Our potential for creativity, innovation, and societal contribution need not be limited by the bar set by elite journals, nor by outdated metrics defined by the Ivory Tower of the past. 

Written by: Geoffrey Ozin [1] and Todd Siler [2,3]

[1] Solar Fuels Group, University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario, Canada, Email: [email protected] , Web sites: www.nanowizard.info , www.solarfuels.utoronto.ca , www.artnanoinnovations.com . [2] ArtScience Productions, Denver, Colorado, USA, Email: [email protected] , Web Site: www.toddsilerart.com/home .

Many colleagues who also recognize the urgency of finding ways to enhance the methods by which the products of their scholarly work are appraised have provided views that have been incorporated into this opinion editorial. Some of these are included below in an effort to improve current practices.

Back in the old days when quality work was published in highly specialized journals facing small communities, or low-impact-factor journals, authors were not aiming for high-impact-factor journals even if they had conceived something novel and thought-provoking, or discovered something truly extraordinary.

In fact, eight examples of breakthrough scientific research were rejected by top rank journals and went on to win the Nobel Prize. The loss for the community is not the lost opportunity for great works to be published in high impact journals, but the chances are, great works are going to specialized journals with much smaller reader exposure. They will miss the opportunity of being read, appreciated and further studied and applied by a large number of researchers.

Elite journals are attracting more and more attention from researchers and other journals are getting much less exposure, another manifestation of the Matthew Effect.

Useful reference works on this subject are quoted below.

“ Academics find themselves in a crisis of their work; a crisis of the meaning for their labour. And the desire to keep going is a buttress against that fear of not mattering .”

“Our analyses show that underrepresented groups produce higher rates of scientific novelty. However, their novel contributions are devalued and discounted: For example, novel contributions by gender and racial minorities are taken up by other scholars at lower rates than novel contributions by gender and racial majorities, and equally impactful contributions of gender and racial minorities are less likely to result in successful scientific careers than for majority groups.”

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There is no denying that the Digital Era has impacted every aspect of the world, including academics and research. Many of these changes have brought significant advantages in global development, such as the ability to communicate with someone regardless of their location or to expand the reach of a business to engage a wide customer base. So much success has been created because of technology, but it has also brought a few disadvantages.

The global and competitive aspect of research means that scholars have to work a bit harder to stand out from the competition in their field if they want to make impacts and obtain research funding grants. To do this, innovation must be combined with novel approaches. But what defines novelty isn’t always cut and dried in the academic landscape.

Defining Novelty

For many people, the word “novelty” is associated with the newest toy on the shelves at Christmas. The connotation includes ideas of something that is superficial but shiny, exciting but quickly discarded after the initial “novelty” wears off. In research, this term means something completely different.

To a researcher and a funding source, a novel idea means something that is unique in the field or scope you’re analyzing. It can be a new methodology or a new design that sets the stage for new knowledge. It could be an approach that purposefully attempts to add more understanding to the current knowledge base. 

In general, it’s a characteristic of research that takes a topic that has already been the focus of experiments in the past and puts a new and original spin on it. Scholars can do this by changing factors like the design itself, the location or demographics of previous studies, or shifting the database entirely. The best way to know if your idea is novel or not is to do in-depth preliminary research and compare your idea with what is already out there on the subject.

Arguments Against Novelty and For Tradition

Scholars today find themselves facing an extra obstacle in the quest for publishing their work in a prestigious journal. Many of today’s publishing companies are looking for novelty over authenticity and expertise. This is because research journals want to publish work that is going to be cited, which is usually a topic that is new and exciting.

The arguments against this often support the claim that many of these “novel” studies don’t have enough support backing them because they focus on the “shiny” aspects of the research rather than the data that backs up the outcome. Funders award grants based on innovative ideas, but then the research that is necessary to substantiate these novel approaches and build on those precarious foundations is pushed to the side. When a grant request has ideas such as “innovative” and “novel” in it, it’s more likely to be approved, and then published, than those that build on those same approaches.

Why a Balanced Approach is Necessary

Some researchers argue that this push for novelty is exactly part of the reason why the field of science is currently in a reproducibility crisis. The focus on getting novel articles published has taken over the in-depth analysis of research in peer review. A balanced approach is required in order to ensure that progress continues to be made in all fields, but that the work published is put through rigorous review processes to ensure replicability and legitimacy.

When scholars see the reward that comes with inflated claims and specific adjectives to define their research as novel, the temptation arises to compromise the neutrality of the process. In the rush for reward, there is neglect in providing evidence to support each claim.

On the other hand, some journals are attempting a counterbalance to prevent weak articles. They want to ensure every idea that’s even remotely incomplete is addressed, which isn’t always feasible and can even be a deterrent to the reader. If a basic idea should be widely understood by someone reading the journal, the fact that the author lays it out anyway can be seen as condescending or a waste of the reader’s time.

Instead, a balanced approach is necessary, in which the editors attempt to scout out the long-term impact of a novel idea and how it might affect future studies. These newer ideas aren’t always backed with solid evidence at the time. It can take years for this to develop. But as a whole, robust work needs to be balanced with reproducible research.

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Novel Research: When Should You Consider Working With a Technical Consultant?

Three years ago I embarked upon an insane journey to do novel research on a series about a world I knew almost nothing about. Fortunately, I was rescued from this shaky course when I found a technical consultant who is an expert on the subject. And not just any expert: the  expert.

My subject was the NYPD Bomb Squad. The expert I engaged to advise me was the active commander of that elite unit, Lt. Mark Torre.

Having worked as a Doubleday editor and as a literary agent, and then having written three novels, I came to this project with an understanding of plot, character, dramatic structure, etc. What I knew less about—well, to be completely honest, what I knew  next to nothing  about—was the inner workings of any kind of police work.

Oh, of course I’d read books and articles and seen my share of cop movies. But in fictional treatments of any subject, facts always take a back seat to story. Which is to say, if facts are in conflict with good storytelling, the facts will suffer, not the other way around. This is acknowledged, tongue in cheek, by the movie  American Hustle,  based on the FBI ABSCAM operation, which opens with the notice: “Some of this actually happened.”

American Hustle (2013), Columbia Pictures.

No Amount of Novel Research (of the Reading and Watching Variety) Can Substitute for a Real Expert

Even nonfiction books have a point of view that may not comport with your fact-based goal as a novelist, which is mostly to create verisimilitude in service to your story . And, to make matters worse, books and movies often get stuff wrong.

For example, in the beginning I hooked up with a man who was then an FBI bomb tech (his official rank was SABT: Special Agent Bomb Technician). He turned out not to be the technical consultant I needed, because the FBI ain’t the NYPD. But we became friends, and one day he explained to me that the smoke used for IED explosions in the movie  Hurt Locker  was the wrong color. I won’t go into specifics on that here, but suffice to say, if I relied on that movie for my information I’d be misinformed.

The Hurt Locker (2008), Summit Entertainment.

Five Reasons to Use a Technical Consultant for Novel Research

If you’re writing about a world you know intimately (maybe you were a reporter on the subject or you worked extensively in the field), you might not need an outsider’s expert advice. But if that doesn’t describe you—if, like me, you’re “only” a writer—consider these arguments for getting hold of someone to act as technical consultant on your novel research.

1. Details Matter

A novel–indeed, any work of art– requires the accretion of details . If you get basic facts wrong regarding equipment or procedures, you run the risk that educated readers will stop to question whether something is true. If that happens, you have knocked the reader out of your story .

2. Learn the Unexpected

Blast From the Past by J.E. Fishman (affiliate link)

Library or internet research can teach us a lot of things, but generally we find what we’re looking for and little else. If you have a good relationship with your technical consultant, you might trip upon novelist’s gold just from a casual conversation. I got the idea for an entire book,  Blast from the Past,  as a result of something my technical consultant casually brought up over dinner.

3. Nothing Tastes Like Flavor

A bit of dialog. The argot of a subculture. How people with your character’s specialty think. These things are hard to come by in conventional research. They are much more easily obtained from someone who works in the trenches.

4. Get Inoculated

Every novelist knows (or soon learns) that trolls lurk out there just waiting to make us look stupid. If some technical detail sounds implausible to readers hoping to find fault in my novels, the fact that the commander of the NYPD Bomb Squad vetted every word should give them pause.

5. The Media Love an Expert

My technical consultant cannot help me promote due to NYPD regulations. Some people, however, are lucky to have a technical consultant who can make herself available for promotion. It’s tough for a novelist to get attention. A “nonfiction” promotional element might just put you over the top.

You’ve Got a Technical Consultant? Now Use Him!

The better your relationship with your technical consultant, the more help you will get on all five of these fronts. When I’m working on a book in the Bomb Squad NYC series, I tap my consultant early and often in these important ways:

• I run the premise by him.
• Sometimes I ask him to review my outline .
• For important plot twists, I ask advice regarding plausibility and other details while I’m plotting or writing.
• Occasionally—not too often to wear out my welcome—we just shoot the breeze over the phone or dinner. On such occasions, I listen carefully to his stories to hear how he talks and see how he relates to his bosses and the men who report to him.
• When I have a first draft, he reads every word and offers feedback with regard to what is realistic and what isn’t.

It’s worth remembering that the technical consultant is not the storyteller. Ultimately, the story takes precedence over everything but public safety (I’ll never reveal a detail that knowingly endangers law enforcement or the public). Although my technical consultant has made every book in the series better and more realistic, we both remember it’s my book to write, not his.

Discovering a technical consultant for your novel research enables you to wade into a subject you otherwise know little about–and it gives readers confidence to suspend their disbelief while engaging with your story.

Tell me your opinion: What kind of technical consultant would you like to work with on your novel research?

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J.E. Fishman is a former Doubleday editor and literary agent who turned his hand to writing fiction several years ago. He is author of the standalone thrillers The Dark Pool and Primacy , , the wise-cracking mystery Cadaver Blues , and the Bomb Squad NYC series of police procedural thrillers. All of his books have appeared on Amazon bestseller lists.

I’ve found that experts are generally very eager to help writers.

When writing ANGRY ENOUGH TO KILL, my thriller about a conspiracy of women who kill pedophiles, I needed a poison with seven characteristics. I spent weeks researching and couldn’t find the right poison.

So, on the advice of a friend, I called Wayne Jeffrey, former Head of the RCMP Toxicology Lab in Vancouver, BC, and then sent him a fax with the list. After about 15 minutes he called me back with the ideal poison…he and the staff of the lab had brainstormed for about 5 minutes to come up with it (compared to my weeks of research!)

But the story gets better. Not only did he vet the scenes relating to the poison, he asked me to send him everything in the novel that related to any kind of forensics, and he distributed the material to the relevant experts in the RCMP for their feedback. Now, if any errors remain in the gun scenes, etc., they’re totally mine.

Other experts helped, too: veterinarians, clinical psychologists, forensic psychologists, and, of course, several survivors of childhood sexual abuse helped with the characterizations of two of the three conspirators in the novel.

I don’t know what writers would do without the help and advice of a wide range of experts, most of whom give their time enthusiastically and generously. I’ve only ever had one expert turn me down even though I was just beginning the journey, and that person couldn’t understand that I’m a novelist, not a journalist. I suspect he never reads fiction.

Great story. Indeed most experts are willing to help — in my experience and from what I’ve heard. My technical consultant has told me that he appreciates the opportunity to be portrayed realistically.

Thanks so much for sharing with us today, Joel!

The pleasure is mine.

Good post–although all that I have published has been non-fiction, I have wondered about borrowing from my dissertation research for a novel… Any advice for historical novels?

I would take care to focus research on the “weak side” of my subject. So, if it’s about big historical events, do some research on the details of everyday life during that period. If it’s about everyday life, research the broad historical events that might be happening in the background and could affect the lives of your characters. In either case, having details that are “off subject” will help ground the reader.

What great advice!

Most of what I write is fantasy/Sci-Fi so I’ve not yet needed to do any research that intensive or technical.

Question, though. Seeing these people are taking time out of their lives and schedules to give you advice, read your drafts, etc., I imagine compensation of some sort would be in order. How does that unfold?

I have found that when it comes to a question or two, people generally are willing to offer their expertise gratis. If the work really hinges upon the expertise of someone other than the author, however, some form of compensation may be appropriate.

Great points, Joel & KM. Coming from a forensic background, I sometimes read things which make me cringe at the lack of knowledge and authenticity that the writer has. My advice is not ‘write what you know’ it’s ‘check what you write’. There’s a phenomenal amount of information out there on the internet, but nothing beats having direct contact with technical expertise.

I do a fair amount of beta reading – not for storyline or word editing – rather for accuracy of technical data. I don’t mind helping writers out so if anyone wants to ship me some questions, specifically about death scenes, autopsies, or firearms – please do. I think a lot of people with expertise would be happy to help writers out. Sometimes all you have to do is ask.

Hi Garry – sorry, can’t retract my posts if I accidentally hit the Enter key! But I could’ve used your help in my first novel, Reciprocity. I write Sci-fi/crime, so occasionally I consult someone about police procedure – my sister, she’s a police officer, so I am lucky to have someone in the family on the force. I consulted a microbiologist for my first novel – I was lucky one was at the same university I work. I’m writing my 4th novel, Ocean Thyme, and may have a few questions for you about forensics, if you don’t mind me asking. Happy New Year.

That’s generous. I might take you up on that myself one of these days. Thanks!

Well, my case is maybe a bit different, but I am enjoying the help of an ‘expert’ in a field very important to my story. My two main characters are Lakota Indians. I’m Italian. You see my problem. Of course, I did every kind of research (both historical and cultural) for two years before I met my expert, but now I know no ammount of indipendet research can substitute the confrontation with a person who knows better.

My friend (because over two years, that’s what we’ve become) isn’t Lakota. She’s Mahawk, a traditionalist, but she has many friends who are Lakota. She helped me enter the world as seen from an Indian perspective, she pointed out details writers use all the time and are incorrect, she helped me becoming aware of what sources are reliable and what aren’t. And the best thing of all, she’s a writer too.

I do all the things mentioned above: brainstorm with her, let her read my symopsis and earlier drafts, ask questions, ask opinions, but it’s really very difficult to say how my story changed in simple responce to my personal relationship with her. I just know – I KNOW – my story would be very different (and yes, less authentic) if I had never met her, in spite of all the reserach I’ve done and am still doing.

Well, my story is also set in America in the Twenties,, but sadly so far I haven’t found an expert who could help me with this. I’ve jus thad to rely on my own research so far.

Good for you. Sometimes native Americans are reluctant to share their culture. So you’re lucky to have formed this relationship!

I didn’t use a technical consultant the way you describe but I did get one from the internet. In my last novel, the protagonist uses an Uzi and while I did get to shoot one when I was in the service, that was more than 30 years ago. So, courtesy of Youtube, I watched one being fired and listened to what the expert had to say about it. I also read the characteristics of the weapon. So, when my protagonist shot up the school, he employed the weapon properly.

Yes, if you can’t get to an expert, there’s no question that the internet is invaluable (and saves loads of time). I’ve used Google street view at times to back up my own recollections etc.

Agreed and thank you.

Excellent article! My big question is, how do you locate/retain a technical consultant? I would love to run my manuscript by a police officer for fact-checking. Seems I keep running into dead ends with my local P.D. Maybe I’m just not asking the right person. 🙂

No simple answer besides pursuing the proverbial six degrees of separation. You probably are no more than three degrees from the person you need. And it’s always easier to have an introduction.

Hi I consulted a microbiologist during the writing of my first novel, Reciprocity. I felt that, everything else being reasonable, the science had to be right. Or I’d have some ‘expert’ poking holes in it – if they weren’t already with the rest of it. After all, the story is about biomedical scientist, so she had to know what she was doing. Thankfully, I’m a researcher so I understand science research and had that part right, what she did though was not my field so I had make sure she ‘knew’ her science. So I turned to a microbiologist. The feedback I got was great; the researcher thought what she was doing was very interesting. It made me feel good about writing the story because it was my first ‘potential commercial’ writing project and I’d got the science right, if not much else.

Ken Follett makes an interesting point about getting facts straight in thrillers. He notes that most thrillers have some plot point at their heart that’s largely implausible. Having all the small stuff right, he says, is a way to distract readers so you can slip that implausibility past them.

Of course, it doesn’t always work. I took pains to get the animal testing lab right in my first novel, Primacy — and had several people who had worked in such places confirm that I’d gotten it right. But one Goodreads reviewer said she thought the plot was a stretch. I’m thinking, well, there WAS a talking ape in it!

Though I am only an amateur writer [mostly fanfiction, though I am trying to get my children’s picture books published] I have tried to apply these principles to my stories. The one widely regarded among my readers as my best is set in New Orleans. As a Brit I couldn’t hope to visit for first hand experience – I don’t even have a passport. What I did have was a fellow fan on the fandom site who was born and raised there. She helped me with a lot of ‘local color’ that made all the difference to the story.

Nice to have friends!

I’m writing Sci-fi, and on an early project, I needed some information about parchment manuscripts. I managed to find an expert online–he made his living restoring old manuscripts, and answered my simple questions. He lived in Holland and his English wasn’t very good, but he was happy to help.

Also concerning that parchment manuscript in my story, I had come up with an idea for a novel writing instrument: a feather, but using the tip instead of the quill. I couldn’t find any information on whether this had ever been done or would work, so I had to become my own expert–I made one and tried it, and it worked. You have to trim the tip to a point, and it works like a paintbrush.

It isn’t always easy to find an expert. Recently I was looking for a word in Japanese to use as the name of a fictitious company, and I knew I couldn’t trust the online machine translators. I put up a notice on Facebook asking for help and got no response. Finally, I hired the job out on Fiverr; I got the results I wanted, for $5.50.

Many of you may find that research is just plain fun. I often get more enjoyment out of hunting down these esoteric details than I do with the rest of the writing process.

The need for correct details is extremely important. I realize this over and over again. For quite a while now I’ve a few ideas about thrillers in my [digital] drawer. Stories that play in the aviation world.

Just couldn’t find time to go for the stories as I’m more busy with copy editing and translations. I may finally find the additional time this year in 2015. The reason why I’m going to stick to aviation is clear and beneficial of course. 🙂

I was for over 30 years deeply involved in aviation. Coming from the engineering side of it, and having an additional background as an avionics instructor and QC inspector, I can fall back on years of experience to be authentic in this field.

Guess I can count my blessings. Being an editor, writer, and having the knowledge in the filed I want to write about isn’t an every day combination. Now I need to find the time and cut down on copy editing. 🙂

Hey Katie, what’s your experience with a technical advisor? Have you used one for your books?

Much of what I write isn’t stuff (history and fantasy) that lends itself well to accessible technical advisers. But I grab them up whenever I can. I was fortunate enough to get advice on early bi-planes from several experts for my historical dieselpunk story Storming , due out later this year.

Hey Katie, Thanks for sharing this infrmation but you had ever worked as freelance with any online firm. Because I just started working with online article writing firm online. I am little bit nerves with there payment system should they will pay me or not??

I’m afraid I don’t have any experience with freelance writing. Best of luck!

Great article and excellent points, thanks! As a beginning writer trying to produce publish-worthy work, what I find amazing, and at times discouraging, is how tough it can be to find technical consultants for specific subjects. Tougher than it seems it should be.

I need an NYPD consultant for the opening scene of my novel, which is a violent confrontation between police and a drug gang in a Harlem park. At first I thought there surely must be at least one cop or retired cop in all of NYC who advertises themselves online as an informational consultant for hire for this sort of thing, but so far I haven’t found any. I live in NYC, so I emailed my community service officer, told him I was a novelist looking for a police consultant. He just directed me to email the Deputy Commissioner for Public Information, with the subject “book” and a list of questions.

While helpful, this isn’t really what I need, for all five reasons you mention in your article, and more. I need someone I can have an extended conversation with, someone whom I’d be willing to pay for their time, expertise, and candor. Someone who can help me figure out how it would really go down, what exact words would be said over the radio, what aspects would be “by the book” and where the book might go out the window, how real cops would react and what would be going through their heads. I can write a scene that will grip the reader, but I need someone who can help me write it such that a reader with inside knowledge would think “This is entirely plausible…this guy knows what he’s talking about.” Some facts may have to get scrapped in favor of story, as you say, but my own standard for my work is that any such scrapping should always be intentional, not accidental.

Do consultants for hire exist? If so, do they advertise themselves as such? And since you mention the NYPD, might you know of any related to NYPD specifically?

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Clinical Researcher

Lessons Learned from Challenging Cases in Clinical Research Ethics

Clinical Researcher April 12, 2024

Clinical Researcher—April 2024 (Volume 38, Issue 2)

RESOURCES & REVIEWS

Lindsay McNair, MD, MPH, MSB

[A review of Challenging Cases in Clinical Research Ethics . 2024. Wilfond BS, Johnson L-M, Duenas DM, Taylor HA (editors). CRC Press (Boca Raton, Fla.)]

Challenging Cases in Clinical Research Ethics may not be a book you take to the beach for a light read, but if you have a role, or an interest, in how we analyze the complex ethical challenges that are an integral part of conducting clinical research, it may be a good book for you. This is a reference book, a teaching tool, and, in some ways, a historical record.

While healthcare institutions have long had ethics committees or even trained clinical ethicists to provide consultation to staff and families during difficult situations in clinical care settings, the specialized practice of clinical research ethics consultation is much more recent. As described in the foreward of the book, the development of this kind of resource was spurred by the National Institutes of Health’s (NIH’s) Clinical and Translational Science Awards (CTSA) program, a funding mechanism which supports a network of almost 60 medical institutions across the United States to facilitate collaboration that expedites the design and dissemination of new medical advances. Since a requirement of the funding program is that the institutions must have ethical support services, the CTSA-funded institutions created ethics consultation services that focused on the research ethics issues likely to arise from the CTSA-funded work.

In 2014, the leaders of the clinical research consultation services across the organizations formed a group to share information and best practices, called the Clinical Research Ethics Consultation Collaborative (CRECC). The CRECC continues to be an active group, and membership is open to anyone who is in a role related to clinical research ethics practice, including representatives not just from the CTSA-funded institutions, but also from biopharmaceutical companies and independent contributors.

This book arose from the work of the CRECC. The cases discussed in the book are real situations at research institutions across the U.S. for which the persons involved sought advice from their local consultation services, and the consultants brought the case to CRECC for discussion. The editors make a point of saying that by the time of the finished case discussion, each case involved 30 to 50 consultants, and they recognize almost 170 contributors to the book, including most of the best-known and most well-respected research bioethicists.

Each year, the American Journal of Bioethics has published up to four of these case presentations, along with two to four commentaries on the case from different ethicists to provide a variety of approaches, perspectives, and opinions. These cases and the accompanying commentaries comprise this book.

The editors have organized the book around the ethical principles for research ethics that were described in a seminar paper by Emanuel, Wendler, and Grady in 2000,{1} resulting in five main sections focused on collaborative partnerships, respect for participants, fair participant selection, favorable risk-benefit ratio, and informed consent. Because they also recognize that there were many possible ways to organize the material and that someone looking for discussion of a specific topic may want to be able to search in more detail, the book includes three separate appendices; one that lists cases by primary and secondary ethical principles involved, one that lists cases by topic keywords (e.g., pediatrics, Phase I trials, social media), and one that lists cases by values relevant to the discussion (social value, equity, and trustworthiness), as well as a standard index which lists topics, people, policies, and keywords and the pages on which the terms appear or are discussed.

In each section, an editor presents a brief description of the unifying theme of that section, and then short summaries of each of the five to eight cases under that theme. The section then delves into each case in more detail with an introduction that includes any necessary background context (disease details, standard of care framing, existing policy), a case description (often just a page or two), references, and then one to four commentaries.

The commentaries, each by different authors, approach different considerations or aspects of the case, together providing a variety of opinions and a well-rounded discussion. For example, there is a case focused on a request from a study team to unblind a participant’s treatment assignment after an adverse event (to help determine relationship to study drug and whether other participants were also at risk, or whether the event was a symptom of the underlying condition). The commentaries are presented by two ethicists from a sponsor company discussing the ethical issues of unblinding and the impact on study data; an ethicist from the NIH discussing considerations of a data monitoring committee in making decisions that will impact studies; and an ethicist involved in health monitoring programs for chronic illness who discusses issues of community trust and communication. The editors and commentators are careful to focus on the relevant ethical issues and conflicts, and not on operational or regulatory requirements, although they do address those considerations.

Although the cases all stem from situations that developed at research institutions, almost all of the content is relevant to other audiences in the clinical research ecosystem, including situations encountered in biopharmaceutical-sponsored studies that industry leaders have to think about. For example, there are cases that discuss ethical implications of advertising for research participants on social media, whether compensation for participation can (or should) be withheld from a participant who was intentionally deceptive to get enrolled in the study, how extensive the “alternative options” presented in a consent form should be, and whether a patient with advanced cancer must exhaust all possible treatment options before being allowed to enroll in a Phase I study of a new immunotherapy.

There are a number of ways that teachers, trainers, and leaders could use the content of this book both for education, and as the basis for case-based discussions. Overall, I would recommend this book as a resource for anyone in a training or leadership role, both for personal education and as a useful tool for developing training content that will likely prompt thoughtful discussion.

• Emanuel EJ, Wendler D, Grady C. 2000. What makes clinical research ethical? JAMA 283(20):2701–11. doi:10.1001/jama.283.20.2701. PMID:10819955.

Lindsay McNair, MD, MPH, MSB, is a physician, research ethicist, and Founder and Principal Consultant of Equipoise Consulting LLC, which provides consulting for projects related to the scientific and ethical conduct of research studies and drug development programs. She joined the Clinical Research Ethics Collaboration Collective, from which the authors of the reviewed book drew their case discussions, in 2023, when the book was already in the process of publication.

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Prestigious cancer research institute has retracted 7 studies amid controversy over errors

Seven studies from researchers at the prestigious Dana-Farber Cancer Institute have been retracted over the last two months after a scientist blogger alleged that images used in them had been manipulated or duplicated.

The retractions are the latest development in a monthslong controversy around research at the Boston-based institute, which is a teaching affiliate of Harvard Medical School. 

The issue came to light after Sholto David, a microbiologist and volunteer science sleuth based in Wales, published a scathing post on his blog in January, alleging errors and manipulations of images across dozens of papers produced primarily by Dana-Farber researchers . The institute acknowledged errors and subsequently announced that it had requested six studies to be retracted and asked for corrections in 31 more papers. Dana-Farber also said, however, that a review process for errors had been underway before David’s post. 

Now, at least one more study has been retracted than Dana-Farber initially indicated, and David said he has discovered an additional 30 studies from authors affiliated with the institute that he believes contain errors or image manipulations and therefore deserve scrutiny.

The episode has imperiled the reputation of a major cancer research institute and raised questions about one high-profile researcher there, Kenneth Anderson, who is a senior author on six of the seven retracted studies. 

Anderson is a professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School and the director of the Jerome Lipper Multiple Myeloma Center at Dana-Farber. He did not respond to multiple emails or voicemails requesting comment. 

The retractions and new allegations add to a larger, ongoing debate in science about how to protect scientific integrity and reduce the incentives that could lead to misconduct or unintentional mistakes in research. 

The Dana-Farber Cancer Institute has moved relatively swiftly to seek retractions and corrections. 

“Dana-Farber is deeply committed to a culture of accountability and integrity, and as an academic research and clinical care organization we also prioritize transparency,” Dr. Barrett Rollins, the institute’s integrity research officer, said in a statement. “However, we are bound by federal regulations that apply to all academic medical centers funded by the National Institutes of Health among other federal agencies. Therefore, we cannot share details of internal review processes and will not comment on personnel issues.”

The retracted studies were originally published in two journals: One in the Journal of Immunology and six in Cancer Research. Six of the seven focused on multiple myeloma, a form of cancer that develops in plasma cells. Retraction notices indicate that Anderson agreed to the retractions of the papers he authored.

Elisabeth Bik, a microbiologist and longtime image sleuth, reviewed several of the papers’ retraction statements and scientific images for NBC News and said the errors were serious. 

“The ones I’m looking at all have duplicated elements in the photos, where the photo itself has been manipulated,” she said, adding that these elements were “signs of misconduct.” 

Dr.  John Chute, who directs the division of hematology and cellular therapy at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center and has contributed to studies about multiple myeloma, said the papers were produced by pioneers in the field, including Anderson. 

“These are people I admire and respect,” he said. “Those were all high-impact papers, meaning they’re highly read and highly cited. By definition, they have had a broad impact on the field.” 

Chute said he did not know the authors personally but had followed their work for a long time.

“Those investigators are some of the leading people in the field of myeloma research and they have paved the way in terms of understanding our biology of the disease,” he said. “The papers they publish lead to all kinds of additional work in that direction. People follow those leads and industry pays attention to that stuff and drug development follows.”

The retractions offer additional evidence for what some science sleuths have been saying for years: The more you look for errors or image manipulation, the more you might find, even at the top levels of science. 

Scientific images in papers are typically used to present evidence of an experiment’s results. Commonly, they show cells or mice; other types of images show key findings like western blots — a laboratory method that identifies proteins — or bands of separated DNA molecules in gels. 

Science sleuths sometimes examine these images for irregular patterns that could indicate errors, duplications or manipulations. Some artificial intelligence companies are training computers to spot these kinds of problems, as well. 

Duplicated images could be a sign of sloppy lab work or data practices. Manipulated images — in which a researcher has modified an image heavily with photo editing tools — could indicate that images have been exaggerated, enhanced or altered in an unethical way that could change how other scientists interpret a study’s findings or scientific meaning. 

Top scientists at big research institutions often run sprawling laboratories with lots of junior scientists. Critics of science research and publishing systems allege that a lack of opportunities for young scientists, limited oversight and pressure to publish splashy papers that can advance careers could incentivize misconduct. 

These critics, along with many science sleuths, allege that errors or sloppiness are too common , that research organizations and authors often ignore concerns when they’re identified, and that the path from complaint to correction is sluggish. 

“When you look at the amount of retractions and poor peer review in research today, the question is, what has happened to the quality standards we used to think existed in research?” said Nick Steneck, an emeritus professor at the University of Michigan and an expert on science integrity.

David told NBC News that he had shared some, but not all, of his concerns about additional image issues with Dana-Farber. He added that he had not identified any problems in four of the seven studies that have been retracted. 

“It’s good they’ve picked up stuff that wasn’t in the list,” he said. 

NBC News requested an updated tally of retractions and corrections, but Ellen Berlin, a spokeswoman for Dana-Farber, declined to provide a new list. She said that the numbers could shift and that the institute did not have control over the form, format or timing of corrections. 

“Any tally we give you today might be different tomorrow and will likely be different a week from now or a month from now,” Berlin said. “The point of sharing numbers with the public weeks ago was to make clear to the public that Dana-Farber had taken swift and decisive action with regard to the articles for which a Dana-Farber faculty member was primary author.” 

She added that Dana-Farber was encouraging journals to correct the scientific record as promptly as possible. 

Bik said it was unusual to see a highly regarded U.S. institution have multiple papers retracted. 

“I don’t think I’ve seen many of those,” she said. “In this case, there was a lot of public attention to it and it seems like they’re responding very quickly. It’s unusual, but how it should be.”

Evan Bush is a science reporter for NBC News. He can be reached at [email protected].

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Annie Jacobsen: 'What if we had a nuclear war?’

The author and Pulitzer prize finalist, who has written the latest pick for the New Scientist Book Club, Nuclear War: A scenario, on the "shocking truths" about a nuclear attack

By Annie Jacobsen

12 April 2024

The Titan nuclear missile in the silo in Arizona, US

Michael Dunning/Getty Images

Not long after the last world war, the historian William L. Shirer had this to say about the next world war. It “will be launched by suicidal little madmen pressing an electronic button. Such a war will not last long and none will ever follow it. There will be no conquers and no conquests, but only the charred bones of the dead on an uninhabited planet.”

As an investigative journalist, I write about war, weapons, national security and government secrets. I’ve previously written six books about US military and intelligence programmes – at the CIA, The Pentagon, Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency– all designed to prevent, or deter, nuclear world war III . In the course of my work, countless people in the upper echelons of US government have told me, proudly, that they’ve dedicated their lives to making sure the US never has a nuclear war. But what if it did?

“Every capability in the [Department of Defense] is underpinned by the fact that strategic deterrence will hold,” US Strategic Command (STRATCOM), which is responsible for nuclear deterrence, insists publicly. Until the autumn of 2022, this promise was pinned on STRATCOM’s public Twitter feed. But to a private audience at Sandia National Laboratories later that same year, STRATCOM’s Thomas Bussiere admitted the existential danger inherent to deterrence. “Everything unravels itself if those things are not true.”

If deterrence fails – what exactly would that unravelling look like? To write Nuclear War: A scenario , I put this question to scores of former nuclear command and control authorities. To the military and civilian experts who’ve built the weapon systems, been privy to the response plans and been responsible for advising the US president on nuclear counterstrike decisions should they have to be made. What I learned terrified me. Here are just a few of the shocking truths about nuclear war.

The US maintains a nuclear launch policy called Launch on Warning. This means that if a military satellite indicates the nation is under nuclear attack and a second early-warning radar confirms that information, the president launches nuclear missiles in response. Former secretary of defense William Perry told me: “Once we are warned of a nuclear attack, we prepare to launch. This is policy. We do not wait.”

The US president has sole authority to launch nuclear weapons. He asks permission of no one. Not the secretary of defense, not the chairman of the joint chief of staff, not the US Congress. “The authority is inherent in his role as commander in chief,” the Congressional Research Service confirms. The president “does not need the concurrence of either his [or her] military advisors or the US Congress to order the launch of nuclear weapons”.

When the president learns he must respond to a nuclear attack, he has just 6 minutes to do so. Six minutes is an irrational amount of time to “decide whether to release Armageddon”, President Ronald Reagan lamented in his memoirs. “Six minutes to decide how to respond to a blip on a radar scope… How could anyone apply reason at a time like that?” And yet, the president must respond. This is because it takes roughly just 30 minutes for an intercontinental ballistic missile to get from a launch pad in Russia, North Korea or China to any city in the US, and vice versa. Nuclear-armed submarines can cut that launch-to-target time to 10 minutes, or less.

Today, there are nine nuclear powers, with a combined total of more than 12,500 nuclear weapons ready to be used. The US and Russia each have some 1700 nuclear weapons deployed – weapons that can be launched in seconds or minutes after their respective president gives the command. This is what Shirer meant when he said: “Such a war will not last long and none will ever follow it.”

Nuclear war is the only scenario other than an asteroid strike that could end civilisation in a matter of hours. The soot from burning cities and forests will blot out the sun and cause nuclear winter. Agriculture will fail. Some 5 billion people will die. In the words of former Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev, “the survivors will envy the dead”.

I wrote Nuclear War: A scenario to demonstrate – in appalling, minute-by-minute detail – just how horrifying a nuclear war would be. “Humanity is one misunderstanding, one miscalculation away from nuclear annihilation,” UN secretary-general António Guterres warned the world in 2022. “This is madness. We must reverse course.”

Nuclear War: A Scenario   by Annie Jacobsen, published by Torva (£20.00), is available now. It is the latest pick for the New Scientist Book Club: sign up  here  to read along with our members

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Spring 2024 ESPM faculty book panel

This spring, professors Sunaura Taylor, Youjin Chung, and Michael Mascarenhas—all faculty in the Department of Environmental Science, Policy, and Management—each published new books examining environmental issues and social movements in the United States and overseas. 

In late February, the authors joined Professor Rachel Morello-Frosch to discuss their findings and book writing process. Listen to their full conversation in the video below.

Disabled Ecologies: Lessons from a Wounded Desert University of California Press Sunaura Taylor

Within Disabled Ecologies, Taylor argues that disability is an integral concept to consider within environmental disciplines and movements. According to Taylor, critical disability studies have previously shown that disability and related concepts like health and illness are malleable and powerful concepts that are often depoliticized. “But disability is not just a biological or medical issue,” she said. “It’s actually a social, political, and relational phenomenon.”

To explore the concept, Taylor follows the “disabled ecology” that emerged from the Tucson International Airport Area (TIAA), a forty-year-old Superfund site created to remediate the long-term ecological damage caused by Hughes Aircraft Company (now RTX). The groundwater contamination sickened thousands of Southside Tucson’s largely Mexican-American population, injured the natural ecosystems, and drastically altered the region’s fragile aquifer.

As a former resident of the Tucson region, Taylor is familiar with the history and narrative surrounding the site. She follows the trails of disability that are created when ecosystems are contaminated, depleted, and profoundly altered to explore new and generative understandings of disability and nature.

In doing this, Taylor reveals the centrality of disability to systems of environmental violence and points out alternative ways of responding to ecological damage. “While focusing on disability, the book builds from many interventions in feminist ecologies, Black ecologies, and queer ecologies to show that social formation and systems of power are central to how we think about the environment, what we think of as the environment, and our relationships with the environment,” she said.

Sweet Deal, Bitter Landscape: Gender Politics and Liminality in Tanzania's New Enclosures Cornell University Press Youjin Chung

In Sweet Deal, Bitter Landscape, Chung traces the lived experiences of diverse groups of rural women and men as they struggled for survival and meaning after the Tanzanian government transferred more than 20,400 hectares of long-settled coastal land in the mid-2000s to a foreign investor seeking to establish a sugarcane plantation. The project was abruptly abandoned after ten years of negotiations, despite its backing by top government officials and promises of financial support from international development agencies.

“Many government officials, donors, journalists, and observers described the deal as having ended or failed with no immediate or long-term consequences,” Chung said. “Rather than characterizing land deals like this that did not go the way project planners had intended as failures, my book examines the deep, profound inequity and uncertainty of being in limbo, as people await development and dispossession yet to come.”

Despite the project’s ostensible failure, those who lived in the region faced what Chung described as an “increasingly militarized, masculinized, and repressive landscape.” She spoke to individuals and families who had to rethink and negotiate their everyday survival strategies after they had their crops uprooted, houses burned down, farm tools stolen, and confrontations with paramilitary groups intensified.

“People compared living in the shadow of this project to living with one foot in and one foot out,” she said. “It was like living in parentheses, or a cage, or like refugees on their own land and in their own nation.”

Toxic Water, Toxic System: Environmental Racism and Michigan's Water War University of California Press Michael Mascarenhas

Mascarenhas’ new book, Toxic Water, Toxic System, amplifies the voices of marginalized communities—particularly African American women, whose perspectives and labor have been consistently overlooked—in this examination of the Flint, Michigan water crisis and water shutoffs in Detroit. “What was being constructed in the media mostly was a narrative that this was a technical problem—that people were asleep at the switch and didn’t treat the river water,” he said. “For me, as a sociologist, that didn’t sound right.”

The book paints a portrait of a seemingly anonymous authoritarian state willing to maintain white supremacy at any cost—including poisoning an entire city and shutting off water to thousands of people. Mascarenhas specifically highlights Michigan Governor Rick Snyder’s use of a controversial state law that allowed him to wrestle legal authority from leaders of both cash-strapped cities and appoint an emergency manager. These managers used their power to cut collective bargaining agreements, pensions, and jobs while raising utility rates in an attempt to close budget gaps.

“At the time, Michigan had a 14 percent African American population, but 80 percent of all African Americans lived under emergency managers,” Mascarenhas said. “During the same period, only 3 percent of white residents had.” 

In Flint, the emergency manager Snyder appointed exposed roughly 100,000 residents to elevated lead levels when he changed the city’s water source in a bid to cut down their budget deficit. In Detroit, the emergency manager drew international attention when he ordered water shutoffs—which peaked at roughly 3,000 a week at the height of summer—for households that were behind on payments. By weaving together three years of fieldwork, interviews with frontline activists, and archival data, Mascarenhas exposes how political alliances and bureaucratic mechanisms profoundly and disproportionately impacted the lives of Black residents. 

Watch the recording of the event below. 

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What is useful research? The good, the bad, and the stable

David m. ozonoff.

1 Department of Environmental Health, Boston University School of Public Health, Boston, MA USA

Philippe Grandjean

2 Department of Environmental Medicine, University of Southern Denmark, Odense, Denmark

3 Department of Environmental Health, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, Boston, MA USA

Associated Data

A scientific journal like Environmental Health strives to publish research that is useful within the field covered by the journal’s scope, in this case, public health. Useful research is more likely to make a difference. However, in many, if not most cases, the usefulness of an article can be difficult to ascertain until after its publication. Although replication is often thought of as a requirement for research to be considered valid, this criterion is retrospective and has resulted in a tendency toward inertia in environmental health research. An alternative viewpoint is that useful work is “stable”, i.e., not likely to be soon contradicted. We present this alternative view, which still relies on science being consensual, although pointing out that it is not the same as replicability, while not in contradiction. We believe that viewing potential usefulness of research reports through the lens of stability is a valuable perspective.

Good science as a purpose

Any scientific journal wishes to add to the general store of knowledge. For Environmental Health, an additional important goal is also to publish research that is useful for public health. While maximizing scientific validity is an irreducible minimum for any research journal, it does not guarantee that the outcome of a “good” article is useful. Most writing on this subject concerns efficiencies and criteria for generating new and useful research results while avoiding “research waste” [ 1 ]. In this regard, the role of journals is hard to define. Indeed, a usefulness objective depends upon what happens after publication, thus to some extent being out of our control. That said, because of the importance of this issue the Editors have set out to clarify our thinking about what makes published research useful.

First the obvious: properly conducted scientific research may not be useful, or worse, may potentially mislead, confuse or be erroneously interpreted. Journal editors and reviewers can mitigate such regrettable outcomes by being attentive to faulty over- or under-interpretation of properly generated data, and vice versa, ensuring that unrealistic standards don’t prevent publication of a “good” manuscript. In regard to the latter, we believe our journal should not shy away from alternative or novel interpretations that may be counter to established paradigms and have consciously adopted a precautionary orientation [ 2 ]: We believe that it is reasonable to feature risks that may seem remote at the moment because the history of environmental and occupational health is replete with instances of red flags ignored, resulting in horrific later harms that could no longer be mitigated [ 3 , 4 ].

Nonetheless, it has happened that researchers publishing results at odds with vested interests have become targets of unreasonable criticism and intimidation whose aim is to suppress or throw suspicion on unwelcome research information, as in the case of lead [ 3 , 5 ] and many other environmental chemicals [ 6 ]. An alternative counter strategy is generating new results favorable to a preferred view [ 7 , 8 ], with the objective of casting doubt on the uncomfortable research results. Indeed, one trade association involved in supporting such science once described its activities with the slogan, “Doubt is our product” [ 9 ]. Thus, for better or for worse, many people do not separate science, whether good or bad, from its implications [ 10 ].

Further, even without nefarious reasons, it is not uncommon for newly published research to be contradicted by additional results from other scientists. Not surprisingly, the public has become all too aware of findings whose apparent import is later found to be negligible, wrong, or cast into serious doubt, legitimately or otherwise [ 11 ]. This has been damaging to the discipline and its reputation [ 12 ].

Replication as a criterion

A principal reaction to this dilemma has been to demand that results be “replicated” before being put to use. As a result, both funding agencies [ 13 ] and journals [ 14 ] have announced their intention of emphasizing the reproducibility of research, thereby also facilitating replication [ 15 ]. On its face this sounds reasonable, but usual experimental or observational protocols are already based on internal replication. If some form of replication of a study is desired, attempts to duplicate an experimental set-up can easily produce non-identical measurements on repeated samples, and seemingly similar people in a population may yield somewhat different observations. Given an expected variability within and between studies, we need to define more precisely what is to be replicated and how it is to be judged.

That said, in most instances, it seems that what we are really asking for is interpretive replication (i.e., do we think two or more studies mean the same thing), not observational or measurement replication. Uninterpreted evidence is just raw data. The main product of scientific journals like Environmental Health is interpreted evidence. It is interpreted evidence that is actionable and likely to affect practice and policy.

Research stability

This brings us back to the question of what kind of evidence and its accompanying interpretation is likely to be of use? The philosopher Alex Broadbent distinguishes between how results get used and the decision about which results are likely to be used [ 16 ]. Discussions of research translation tend to focus on the former question, while the latter is rarely discussed. Broadbent introduces a new concept into the conversation, the stability of the research results.

He begins by identifying which results are not likely to be used. Broadbent observes that if a practitioner or policy-maker thinks a result might soon be overturned she is unlikely to use it. Since continual revision is a hallmark of science, this presents a dilemma. All results are open to revision as science progresses, so what users and policy makers really want are stable results, ones whose meaning is unlikely to change in ways that make a potential practice or policy quickly obsolete or wrong. What are the features of a stable result?

This is a trickier problem than it first appears. As Broadbent observes it does not seem sufficient to say that a stable a result is one that is not contradicted by subsequent work, an idea closely related to replication. Failure to contradict, like lack of replication, may have many reasons, including lack of interest, lack of funding, active suppression of research in a subject, or external events like social conflict or recession. Moreover, there are many examples of clinical practice, broadly accepted as stable in the non-contradiction sense, that have not been tested for one reason or another. Contrariwise, contradictory results may also be specious or fraudulent, e.g., due to attempts to make an unwelcome result appear unstable and hence unusable [ 6 , 9 ]. In sum, lack of contradiction doesn’t automatically make a result stable, nor does its presence annul the result.

One might plausibly think that the apparent truth of a scientific result would be sufficient to make a result stable. This is also in accordance with Naomi Oreskes’ emphasis of scientific knowledge being fundamentally consensual [ 10 ] and relies on the findings being generalizable [ 15 ]. Our journal, like most, employs conventional techniques like pre-publication peer review and editorial judgment, to maximize scientific validity of published articles; and we require Conflict of Interest declarations to maximize scientific integrity [ 6 , 17 ]. Still, a result may be true but not useful, and science that isn’t true may be very useful. Broadbent’s example of the latter is the most spectacular. Newtonian physics continues to be a paragon of usefulness despite the fact that in the age of Relativity Theory we know it to be false. Examples are also prevalent in environmental health. When John Snow identified contaminated water as a source of epidemic cholera in the mid-nineteenth Century he believed a toxin was the cause, as the germ theory of disease had not yet found purchase. This lack of understanding did not stop practitioners from advocating limiting exposure to sewage-contaminated water. Nonetheless, demands for modes of action or adverse outcome pathways are often used to block the use of new evidence on environmental hazards [ 18 ].

Criteria for stability

Broadbent’s suggestion is that a result likely to be seen as stable by practitioners and policy makers is one that (a) is not contradicted by good scientific evidence; and (b) would not likely be soon contradicted by further good research [ 16 ] (p. 63).

The first requirement, (a), simply says that any research that produces contradictory evidence be methodologically sound and free from bias, i.e., “good scientific evidence.” What constitutes “good” scientific evidence is a well discussed topic, of course, and not a novel requirement [ 1 ], but the stability frame puts existing quality criteria, in a different, perhaps more organized, structure, situating the evidence and its interpretation in relation to stability as a criterion for usefulness.

More novel is requirement (b), the belief that if further research were done it would not likely result in a contradiction. The if clause focuses our attention on examining instances where the indicated research has not yet been done. The criterion is therefore prospective, where the replication demand can only be used in retrospect.

This criterion could usefully be applied to inconclusive or underpowered studies that are often incorrectly labeled “negative” and interpreted to indicate “no risk” [ 18 ]. A U.S. National Research Council committee called attention to the erroneous inference that chemicals are regarded inert or safe, unless proven otherwise [ 19 ]. This “untested-chemical assumption” has resulted in exposure limits for only a small proportion of environmental chemicals, limits often later found to be much too high to adequately protect against adverse health effects [ 20 , 21 ]. For example, some current limits for perfluorinated compounds in drinking water do not protect against the immunotoxic effects in children and may be up to 100-fold too high [ 22 ].

Inertia as a consequence

Journals play an unfortunate part in the dearth of critical information on emerging contaminants, as published articles primarily address chemicals that have already been well studied [ 23 ]. This means that environmental health research suffers from an impoverishing inertia, which may in part be due to desired replications that may be superfluous or worse. The bottom line is that longstanding acceptance in the face of longstanding failure to test a proposition should not be used as a criterion of stability or of usefulness, although this is routinely done.

If non-contradiction, replication or truth are not reliable hallmarks of a potentially useful research result, then what is? Broadbent makes the tentative proposal that a stable interpretation is one which has a satisfactory answer to the question, “Why this interpretation rather than another?” Said another way, are there more likely, almost or equally as likely, or other possible explanations (including methodological error in the work in question)? Sometimes the answer is patently obvious. Such an evaluation is superfluous in instances where the outcomes have such forceful explanations that this exercise would be a waste of time, for example a construction worker falling from the staging. We only need one instance and (hopefully no repetitions) to make the case.

Consensus and stability

Having made the argument for perspicuous interpretation, we must also issue a note of caution. It is quite common to err in the other direction by downplaying conclusions and implications. Researchers frequently choose to hedge their conclusions by repeated use of words such as ‘maybe’, ‘perhaps’, ‘in theory’ and similar terms [ 24 ]. Indeed, we might call the hedge the official flower of epidemiology. To a policy maker, journalist or member of the public not familiar with the traditions of scientific writing, the caveats and reservations may sound like the new results are irredeemably tentative, leaving us with no justification for any intervention. To those with a vested interest, the soft wording can be exploited through selective quotation and by emphasizing real or alleged weaknesses [ 25 ]. This tendency goes beyond one’s own writings and affects peer review and evaluations of manuscripts and applications. Although skepticism is in the nature of science, a malignant form is the one that is veiled and expressed in terms of need for further replication or emphasizing limitations of otherwise stable observations [ 9 ]. By softening the conclusions and avoiding attribution of specific causality and the possible policy implications, researchers protect themselves against critique by appearing well-balanced, unassuming, or even skeptical toward one’s own findings. In seeking consensus, researchers often moderate or underestimate their findings, a tendency that is not in accordance with public health interests.

These are difficult issues, requiring a balancing act. The Editors continue to ponder the question how to inspire, improve and support the best research and its translation. We believe Broadbent’s stability idea is worth considering as an alternative perspective to the replication and research translation paradigms prevalent in discussions of this topic. We also believe in Oreskes’ vision of consensus, though not to a degree that will preclude new interpretations. Meanwhile, we will endeavor to keep the Journal’s standards high while encouraging work that will make a difference.

Acknowledgements

Authors’ contributions.

DMO and PG jointly drafted the Editorial and read and approved the final version.

Availability of data and materials

Ethics approval and consent to participate, consent for publication, competing interests.

DMO and PG are editors-in-chief of this journal but have no other interests to declare.

Publisher’s Note

Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Contributor Information

David M. Ozonoff, Email: ude.ub@ffonozod .

Philippe Grandjean, Email: kd.uds@dnargp , Email: kd.uds.htlaeh@naejdnarGP .

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4 Reasons Why Managers Fail

• Swagatam Basu,
• Atrijit Das,
• Vitorio Bretas,
• Jonah Shepp

Nearly half of all managers report buckling under the stress of their role and struggling to deliver.

Gartner research has found that managers today are accountable for 51% more responsibilities than they can effectively manage — and they’re starting to buckle under the pressure: 54% are suffering from work-induced stress and fatigue, and 44% are struggling to provide personalized support to their direct reports. Ultimately, one in five managers said they would prefer not being people managers given a choice. Further analysis found that 48% of managers are at risk of failure based on two criteria: 1) inconsistency in current performance and 2) lack of confidence in the manager’s ability to lead the team to future success. This article offers four predictors of manager failure and offers suggestions for organizations on how to address them.

The job of the manager has become unmanageable. Organizations are becoming flatter every year. The average manager’s number of direct reports has increased by 2.8 times over the last six years, according to Gartner research. In the past few years alone, many managers have had to make a series of pivots — from moving to remote work to overseeing hybrid teams to implementing return-to-office mandates.

• Swagatam Basu is senior director of research in the Gartner HR practice and has spent nearly a decade researching leader and manager effectiveness. His work spans additional HR topics including learning and development, employee experience and recruiting. Swagatam specializes in research involving extensive quantitative analysis, structured and unstructured data mining and predictive modeling.
• Atrijit Das is a senior specialist, quantitative analytics and data science, in the Gartner HR practice. He drives data-based research that produces actionable insights on core HR topics including performance management, learning and development, and change management.
• Vitorio Bretas is a director in the Gartner HR practice, supporting HR executives in the execution of their most critical business strategies. He focuses primarily on leader and manager effectiveness and recruiting. Vitorio helps organizations get the most from their talent acquisition and leader effectiveness initiatives.
• Jonah Shepp is a senior principal, research in the Gartner HR practice. He edits the Gartner  HR Leaders Monthly  journal, covering HR best practices on topics ranging from talent acquisition and leadership to total rewards and the future of work. An accomplished writer and editor, his work has appeared in numerous publications, including  New York   Magazine ,  Politico   Magazine ,  GQ , and  Slate .

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