I wanted to tell you how your initiative in founding this journal really rings a bell in my mind. I think it represents exactly what was crutially missing in the field. To my point of view there is however no real negative results but so far only so-called positive ones received attention and I always wondered why. The thing is that minds have to drastically change in order for scientists to consider those so-called negative results being critical in potentially explaining the diffulties one ever encounters while trying to design and test new experiments, drugs or chemicals and to challenge widely accepted theories. These results are as important as the ones from "succeeding" experiments. While proceeding with this email I'm feeling the semantic difficulty of only writing about these results. And this is maybe the first criticism I wanted to address. The name of this journal comprises and maybe gather the negative image of these kind of results. The first time I saw it I thought I will take a little time to read those articles to relax and laugh a little as I thought it might be something related to the IgNobel prize (http://www.improb.com/ig/ig-top.html) which is obviously not. Thus if possible in order to make it less negative title suggestions would be "the alternative journal of unexpected results in biomedicine" or "the journal of controversy in biomedical research" or "the progressive journal of realistic results in biomedicine" or a mix of that.
The second criticism I wanted to address is that only scientits or medical doctors working in the US have been elected in the editorial board. Broadening this board by including scientists world wide would greately improve the impact of this publication.
In any case, I wish more people will massively submit manuscripts to the journal (and I know people for whom this might be helpful to allow them to express opinions that are litteraly censored by results, miraculous in nature, that were previously published in high impact journals). Also I whish this journal might help publishing comparative results showing the different outcomes emanating from different experimental contexts and procedures, using specific animal strain and provider, chemical enanthiomers, concentrations, administration routes, etc etc.
Full supporter of your initiative
1 July 2003
Dear editors of JNRBM,
I wanted to tell you how your initiative in founding this journal really rings a bell in my mind. I think it represents exactly what was crutially missing in the field. To my point of view there is however no real negative results but so far only so-called positive ones received attention and I always wondered why. The thing is that minds have to drastically change in order for scientists to consider those so-called negative results being critical in potentially explaining the diffulties one ever encounters while trying to design and test new experiments, drugs or chemicals and to challenge widely accepted theories. These results are as important as the ones from "succeeding" experiments. While proceeding with this email I'm feeling the semantic difficulty of only writing about these results. And this is maybe the first criticism I wanted to address. The name of this journal comprises and maybe gather the negative image of these kind of results. The first time I saw it I thought I will take a little time to read those articles to relax and laugh a little as I thought it might be something related to the IgNobel prize (http://www.improb.com/ig/ig-top.html) which is obviously not. Thus if possible in order to make it less negative title suggestions would be "the alternative journal of unexpected results in biomedicine" or "the journal of controversy in biomedical research" or "the progressive journal of realistic results in biomedicine" or a mix of that.
The second criticism I wanted to address is that only scientits or medical doctors working in the US have been elected in the editorial board. Broadening this board by including scientists world wide would greately improve the impact of this publication.
In any case, I wish more people will massively submit manuscripts to the journal (and I know people for whom this might be helpful to allow them to express opinions that are litteraly censored by results, miraculous in nature, that were previously published in high impact journals). Also I whish this journal might help publishing comparative results showing the different outcomes emanating from different experimental contexts and procedures, using specific animal strain and provider, chemical enanthiomers, concentrations, administration routes, etc etc.
Thanks for your attention and your initiative
Gael Hedou.
Competing interests
None declared