Does Politics Influence When Scientific Papers Are Published?

 
I'm told that the American House of Representatives is considering a bill that will allow embryonic stem cell research. Matt Nisbet thinks that the recent publication of three papers on stem cell research [Reprogramming Somatic Cells] may have been timed to correspond with this debate in the US Congress [Understanding the political timing of stem cell studies]. Nisbet quotes from an article by Rick Weiss in the Washington Post [Darn Cells. Dividing Yet Again!]. Here's what Weiss says,

Thursday, June 7. After months of intense lobbying by scientists and patient advocacy groups, the House is ready to vote on legislation that would loosen President Bush's restrictions on the use of human embryos in stem cell research. But that very morning, the lead story in every major newspaper is about research just published in a British journal that shows stem cells can be made from ordinary skin cells.

The work was in mice, but the take-home message that suffuses Capitol Hill is that there is no need to experiment on embryos after all.

If that doesn't sound suspicious, consider this:

Monday, Jan. 8. After months of intense lobbying by scientists and patient advocacy groups, Congress is ready to vote on legislation that would loosen Bush's restrictions on stem cell research. But that very morning, newspapers are touting new research just published in a British journal suggesting that stem cells can be made from easily obtained placenta cells. No need for embryos after all!

Is there a plot afoot?

Lots of lobbyists, members of Congress and even a few scientists are starting to think so.

"It is ironic that every time we vote on this legislation, all of a sudden there is a major scientific discovery that basically says, 'You don't have to do stem cell research,' " Democratic Caucus Chairman Rahm Emanuel (Ill.) sputtered on the House floor on Thursday. "I find it very interesting that every time we bring this bill up there is a new scientific breakthrough," echoed Rep. Diana DeGette (D-Colo.), lead sponsor of the embryo access bill. Her emphasis on the word "interesting" clearly implies something more than mere interest.

"Convenient timing for those who oppose embryonic stem cell research, isn't it?" added University of Pennsylvania bioethicist Arthur Caplan in an online column. (The bill passed easily, but not with a margin large enough to override Bush's promised veto.)

Hmmm ... let's see if we can figure out what's going on here. Apparently there's some vast conspiracy afoot to keep the American ban on embryonic stem cell research in place. The idea is that scientists and the editors of Nature (for example) want to publish key papers about alternatives to embryonic stem cell research just when American politicians are about to vote on a bill to lift the ban.

The conspiracy makes several key assumptions. It assumes that the editors of the British journal Nature knew about the American bill back on May 22nd when they accepted the two papers. That's when the decision to publish on line for June 6th was taken (the two week delay between acceptance and online publication is typical). It assumes, therefore, that the acceptance date was juggled to meet the target date of June 6th—assuming that the editors even knew, or cared, about what was going on in Washington D.C. (USA). Presumably the acceptance date was delayed somewhat in order to fix the timing. One assumes that the group in Japan who published one of the papers had no problem with this delay and nor did the scientists in Boston. The papers were extremely important in a competitive field but, hey, anything can wait for American politics, right?

Harvard risk expert David Roepik and Temple mathematician John Allan Paulos are skeptical about the conspiracy theory with good reason. The whole idea is ludicrous but that doesn't stop Matt Nisbet from suggesting that it's true. Here's what Nisbet says,

Still, something more than just coincidence is likely to be going on here. Roepik and Paulos' arguments innocently assume that publication timing at science journals is random, without systematic bias. But journal editors, just like news organization editors and journalists, are subject to various biases, many of them stemming from the fact that they work within a profit-driven organization that has to keep up a subscriber base and play to their audience.

Peer-review is just one of the many filtering devices that scientific research goes through. Certainly many papers make it through peer-review based on technical grounds, but then editors at the elite journals, faced with limited space and the need to create drama and interest among subscribers and news organizations, apply more subjective criteria based on what they believe to be the "scientific newsworthiness" of the research. In other words, how much interest among the scientific community will these papers generate AND how much news attention?

Still, Nisbet isn't quite as paranoid and confused about the process as Rick Wiess. In the Washington Post article he says,

Then there is the question of motive. The Brits are competing against Americans in the stem cell field and are legally allowed to conduct studies on embryos. Might they be aiming to dominate the field by helping the conservative and religious forces that have so far restricted U.S. scientists' access to embryos?

Or might the journals be trying, as one stem cell expert opined on the condition of anonymity, to leverage their visibility by publishing stem cell articles just as Congress is voting on the topic?

Damn Brits. :-)

In fairness, Weiss includes a disclaimer from the editors of Nature,

"Nature has no hidden agenda in publishing these papers," said the journal's senior press officer, Ruth Francis, in an e-mail. The real goal was to get the papers out before a big stem cell conference in Australia next week, she said.

More significantly, Weiss includes a comment from someone who seems to have hit the nail on the head,

To Ropeik, the Harvard risk expert, the fact that people are imputing anything more than sheer coincidence is "just more proof that inside the Beltway the thinking is so myopic. They see the whole world through their own lens, and are blinded" to common sense.

That sounds about right to me. If you live in Washington you start to think that the whole world revolves around the White House and Congress. It's easy to believe that everything has to be spun framed in order to influence American politicians—even the timing of publication of scientific papers by a prominent British journal.