This past week, my fellow scientists took to Twitter with the hashtag #overlyhonestmethods to spill some of the actual methodology behind their data.
Here are some article with some of the top tweets:
http://io9.com/5974256/overlyhonestmethods-is-the-postsecret-of-the-science-world-and-it-is-amazing
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/01/08/overly-honest-methods-twitter_n_2435364.html
http://www.the-scientist.com/?articles.view/articleNo/33930/title/Overly-Honest-Methods/
Quite frankly, I don’t really care what this says about the scientific method, or validity of papers published in high profile journals, or dubious use of grant money. It’s funny, dammit! Just read them, and laugh!
What would some of my overly honest methods be? Hmmmm….
“We don’t know how this data was obtained, because according to the postdoc, ‘it’s a secret.'”
“Authors 3-5 did not contribute to this project, but were named as authors because they gave me author credit on their last papers.”
“We can’t be sure if these results are reliable, because the postdoc may have purposefully contaminated all the reagents when he was fired.”
“SD rats 4 months old and 450g were used because they were left over from the last experiment.”
“We ran PCR at these settings because it was the shortest run possible. Especially since we were borrowing another lab’s thermocycler.”
“Surgery was performed as previously published, which is what we’ve said in the last 4 papers, so I’m guessing it was the same.”
Jedi by Knight 