Question

Excited about fungus chemical's promise for treating cancer, you write up your experimental results and send the paper to a prestigious scientific journal, hoping it will be published. The journal sends your paper out to several scientists for evaluation--a process known as peer review.

The reviewers ID several issues with the experimental design and data presented in your paper. Which of the following chritisims are valid issues of concern that peer reviewers might ID?

Answer 1

Answer:

The options

Select all that apply.

A. There was no control in the experiment.

B. The experiment should have been run for more days in order to make the effect of the fungus chemical clearer.

C. Cell samples were taken from too few patients.

D. The treatment kills cancer cells, but it might simply be a poison that kills all cells—even normal cells.

E. The effect may not be real because we don’t know if the results are reproducible.

The answer is

C. Cell samples were taken from too few patients.

D. The treatment kills cancer cells, but it might simply be a poison that kills all cells--even normal cells

E. The effect may not be real because we don't know if the results are reproducible.

Explanation:

Majority of the scientific journals do employ peer review when they review a paper for publication so as to ascertain that the studies to be published are of the best quality to an high degree. Peer reviewers, who are impartial professional in the same area of specialisation as the article's author, study the quality of the research methodology and propose revisions, if need be for revisions. A peer­reviewed journal will not publish articles that could not match the requirements set up by the scientific community.

In this case, issues observed by peer review are:•

• C. Cell samples were taken from too few patients.

Cancer cells were derived from just a singular patient. Cells from other patients ought to have been examined.

• D. The treatment kills cancer cells, but it might simply be a poison that kills all cells--even normal cells

The fungus chemical was not examined on normal cells. There is the probability that the chemical is mainly a poison that destroys all cells—including the normal cells.

• E. The effect may not be real because we don't know if the results are reproducible.

The results may not be reproducible. The experiment had to do with only two replicates (two samples treated with the fungus chemical and two controls).