Autism Street

In my last post,  a new paper hypothesizing hyperbaric therapy as a treatment for autism was barely introduced. I will be going into much more detail, but wanted correction of what appears to be significant factual error in the paper first. You can read the details about the likely error and my request to Medical Hypotheses for publication of an erratum in my last post.

To make a long story short, it appears that the journal, Medical Hypostheses could not care less about my communication. The editor did respond, but suggested that I contact the study authors myself. In fact, their peer-review and publication policies are outlined quite clearly on their website.

Aims & Scope

Medical Hypotheses takes a deliberately different approach to peer review. Most contemporary practice tends to discriminate against radical ideas that conflict with current theory and practice. Medical Hypotheses will publish radical ideas, so long as they are coherent and clearly expressed. Furthermore, traditional peer review can oblige authors to distort their true views to satisfy referees, and so diminish authorial responsibility and accountability. In Medical Hypotheses, the authors’ responsibility for the integrity, precision and accuracy of their work is paramount. The editor sees his role as a ‘chooser’, not a ‘changer’: choosing to publish what are judged to be the best papers from those submitted.

(emphasis mine)

Authors are required to pay page charges. Details are given in the Guide for Authors on the Author Gateway.

So essentially, it looks all that’s needed, is that one write a coherent and clearly expressed paper, pay the fee, and that’s about it. All responsibility for integrity, precision, and accuracy is up to the author.

So the question now becomes, how concerned are this paper’s authors with integrity, precision, and accuracy? I don’t see how that can be known without asking them to consider publishing an erratum themselves, so I’ve essentially sent the same erratum request to Dr. Rossignol, and L.W. Rossignol. I’ll be sure to let you know about their decision just as soon as I know what they intend to do.