Misplaced obsession with prospectively randomized studies

Academia's obsession with quantity.

We live in the era of rankings. Universities are being ranked, journals are being ranked, and researchers are being ranked. In this era of rankings, the value of researchers is measured in the number of their papers published, the citations they received, and the volume of grant income earned. Academia today is governed by one simple rule: more is better. The idea to reward those who are produc...

The obsession with primary angioplasty.

To the Editor: Grines et al1 once more reiterate their enthusiasm for primary percutaneous transluminal coronary angioplasty (PTCA) in STsegment elevation myocardial infarction. We agree that this maneuver is extremely attractive for most cardiologists, yet we believe that data should be examined for what they actually show. The Keeley et al2 review shows only a trend in mortality reduction whe...

Misplaced Trust ?

Introduction Driverless cars are on the way. Most major motor manufacturers are developing them, and all expect them to be on our roads sooner, rather than later [1]. When we drive, we believe we are in control. Yet, technologies such as cruise control, lane control and, soon, "platooning" or "vehicle convoying" are beginning to take away our direct control of vehicle speed/direction. While we ...

Splicing Misplaced

Newly synthesized transcripts are usually spliced during transcription or immediately thereafter. So pre-mRNA splicing has been presumed to occur exclusively in the cell nucleus. In this issue of Cell, Denis et al. (2005) now report the presence of functional spliceosomes and signal-dependent pre-mRNA splicing in the cytoplasm of platelets.

Bacterial growth: constant obsession with dN/dt.