Editorial
Abstract
There are a hundred reasons to love the JCI and I have loved it truly, madly, and deeply for the last nine years. Alas, I’ll have to learn to love the Journal from afar, as tomorrow marks my last official day as Executive Editor. To quote Chaucer, “There is an end to everything, to good things as well.”
Authors
Ushma S. Neill
Abstract
On the occasion of the 200th anniversary of Charles Dickens’s birth, I am struck by his creative genius and by the parallel between the intellectual development of his protagonists and the evolution of peer review. Like many of his novels and serial writings, the story of the history of peer review is a bildungsroman, one that has followed a process of growing up, sought answers through a journey marked by achievement and disappointment, and ultimately matured to be accepted by a community.
Authors
Howard A. Rockman
Abstract
Starting with this issue, the Editorial duties for the JCI move to Duke University and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. As we begin our five-year tenure at the helm of this prestigious journal, the tradition of excellence that these two schools typically display on the basketball court now enters the editorial boardroom.
Authors
Howard A. Rockman
Abstract
The practice of transplanting organs from executed prisoners in China appears to be widespread. We vigorously condemn this practice and, effective immediately, will not consider manuscripts on human organ transplantation for publication unless appropriate non-coerced consent of the donor is provided and substantiated.
Authors
Arthur L. Caplan, Howard A. Rockman, Laurence A. Turka
Abstract
We live in a time of increased spending, mounting debt, and few remedies for balancing the federal budget that have bipartisan support. Unfortunately, one recent target for decreased allocations of the federal budget is the NIH; the discussion of the awarded grants and the grant funding process has been skewed and altered to present medical research in an unfriendly light, and this can have very damaging repercussions. Politicizing this process could ultimately challenge human health, technology, and economic growth.
Authors
Jonathan A. Epstein
Abstract
I’ve listened to many of you moan about the current flat NIH budgets, lack of funding, and the frustration of being a scientist in the current depressed economy. Instead of complaining to only ourselves in the scientific community, we need to make ourselves heard by politicians and the public at large. We need a pundit.
Authors
Ushma S. Neill
Abstract
The term evidence-based medicine is overused, abused, and is beginning to ring hollow. It is not that evidence (or at least of what most people in biomedicine think evidence-based medicine should strive to be) is a bad thing. Rather, there is more rhetoric about evidence than there is actual evidence to support the degree of talk.
Authors
Laurence A. Turka, Arthur Caplan
Abstract
The National Institutes of Health and many of our biomedical institutions face significant budgetary challenges that are likely to persist for the foreseeable future. The paylines for Research Project Grant (RO1) applications to the NIH will be near or below the tenth percentile, and many investigators are growing increasingly concerned about maintaining their research programs. One of the most concerning potential results of limited grant dollars is the natural tendency for researchers to propose conservative projects that are more likely to succeed, to do well in peer review, and to be funded, but that may not dramatically advance the field, and a concurrent tendency among study sections to reward proposals that are seen as safe, if uninspiring. Established and well-respected investigators may be (perhaps appropriately) given the benefit of the doubt when compared with less-established colleagues and may therefore command a growing percentage of the total available grant dollars, while simultaneously avoiding bold and potentially groundbreaking approaches. At the same time, fewer dollars are available for new investigators with unproven track records and for the expansion of newly successful programs.
Authors
Jonathan A. Epstein
Abstract
Did you know that gay men can’t donate blood, nor can they donate sperm anonymously to sperm banks? I applaud the 18 senators who have banded together to urge FDA Commissioner Margaret Hamburg to revisit this issue, as current scientific data on infectious diseases does not lend credence to these policies.
Authors
Ushma S. Neill
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ISSN: 0021-9738 (print), 1558-8238 (online)