Balanced decisions and unbiased reporting in bioscience and medicine

Abstract

In this editorial we comment on editorial policies of the Journal of Bioscience and Medicine (JBM) in relation to advancing the knowledge base in bioscience and medicine. These include a rapid review process, a free open publication format, an emphasis on “building block” research as well as novel studies, no limitation in word count, open discussion and active distribution of papers to a relevant audience of scientific colleagues; and most importantly, publication of both positive and negative results papers. We argue that given the role probability in science and self-correcting nature of scientific inquiry, the scientific community must have access to the full range of evidence for and against specific hypotheses and associations; from this perspective, negative results in papers meeting quality standards should be treated no differently than positive results. Moreover, we suggest specific guidelines for presenting negative results, reviewing negative results, and most importantly, deciding when to submit negative results to peer review. Among these guidelines is the GRADE (Grades of Recommendation, Assessment, Development, and Evaluation) approach to evaluating the quality of the research and presentation of data in formats reasonable for interpretation of negative and positive finding. More generally we argue that one of the most significant reasons that negative results are not published is the reluctance of investigators to publish negative results. We suggest that positive decisions to submit negative results data may be more likely for journals such as JBM that publish both positive and negative results in a balanced fashion rather than focusing on either negative and positive results papers.