Today, the Canadian Medical Association (CMA) released an linkurl:Open Letter;http://www.cma.ca/multimedia/CMA/Content_Images/Inside_cma/Media_Release/pdf/2006/CMA_President_Editorial_Board.pdf to the majority of the Editorial board members of the Canadian Medical Association Journal (CMAJ) who resigned this week after ongoing disputes with the CMA over the journal?s editorial independence. In the letter, CMA president Ruth Collins-Nakai says she "takes great exception" to the former

The Alberta government has decided to suspend its annual spring grizzly bear hunt for the first time in five years. Last month, linkurl:we reported;http://www.the-scientist.com/news/display/23143/ that conservationists had accused the province of hiding DNA data on the health of the grizzly population and stripping a critic of the grizzly hunt of his unofficial position as the "go-to" expert on grizzlies. The government has insisted that it was not withholding DNA data, and was merely

FEATUREThe Longevity Dividend Your Money for Your Life How one company carved itself a piece of the anti-aging industry pie BY ALISON MCCOOKILLUSTRATIONS BY JOELLE BOLTWhen it comes to aging, consumers don't slow down for science. The pleas of thousands, starving for a pill that will slow, stop, or reverse the inevitable, clog the Internet. With an insatiable desire for something that doesn't yet exist, people are using themsel

Scientists from both sides of the pond are taking dramatic steps to save animal research. Days after researchers and animal rights groups linkurl:staged parallel protests;http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20060225/sc_nm/rights_britain_animals_dc about the future of Oxford labs in the UK, Ohio State University primate researcher Sally Boysen and other protestors physically chained themselves to a gate outside a chimpanzee center slated for closure. linkurl:According to;http://www.ohio.com/mld/beaconjo

Board members argue decision stemmed from disputes over editorial independence

In the latest of a long line of developments, Columbia University appears to have withdrawn its name from a linkurl:2001 study;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=pubmed&dopt=Abstract&list_uids=11584476&query_hl=7&itool=pubmed_docsum in the Journal of Reproductive Medicine co-authored by Korean researcher Kwang Yul Cha. During the study, prayer appeared to boost the success of in vitro fertilization (IVF), even though infertile couples weren?t aware of the intervention.

When I saw this month?s linkurl:cover story;http://www.the-scientist.com/2006/2/1/26/1/ earned a mention in Monday?s New York Times article called "Reporters find science journals harder to trust, but not easy to verify," my eyes lingered over both the headline of the story and the writer?s take on our article? namely, that the rocketing rate of submissions to top-tier journals was "weakening the screening process." On the one hand, I see her point. While journals appear to

Little did I know what a treat I was getting at last week?s linkurl:conference;http://www.socres.org/polsci/agenda.htm at the New School in New York called "Politics & Science: How their interplay results in public policy." On the second day, attendees heard a meticulous synopsis of the scientific data to support the trend of global warming, presented by James Hansen, the now-beleaguered NASA climate scientist who has accused the U.S. government of suppressing his findings. Hansen ? w

Despite a handful of recent criminal charges against researchers, experts say more legal action could hurt science

Peer review is on every life scientist?s mind lately, it seems. One of the main complaints I heard while researching the linkurl:February cover story;http://www.the-scientist.com/2006/2/1/26/1/ is that the process is inherently difficult to investigate scientifically. Each journal has a somewhat unique system for reviewing papers, and each paper will have a unique journey through a journal?s reviewing machinery. But I?ve learned that even though peer review has obvious imperfections, it?s the b

FEATUREIs Peer Review Broken? Submissions are up, reviewers are overtaxed, and authors are lodging complaint after complaint about the process at top-tier journals. What's wrong with peer review? BY ALISON MCCOOK Peter Lawrence, a developmental biologist who is also an editor at the journal Development and former editorial board member at Cell, has been publishing papers in academic journals for 40 years. His f

FEATUREIs Peer Review Broken?Truth or Myth? © GETTY IMAGESWe presented three common complaints about peer review at top-tier journals to editors at some of those journals. Here are their responses:ARTICLE EXTRASRelated Articles: Is Peer Review Broken?Submissions are up, reviewers are overtaxed, and authors are lodging complaint after complaint about the process at top-tier journal