Science interminable: Blame Ben?

Solomon H. Snyder. Science is indeed interminable. Criticizing old ideas, coming up with new ones in an iterative process of creative destruction and reinvention is the spice of life for research. But there is another seemingly interminable aspect of science, at least in the biomedical arena, related to journal publication. When I was a postdoctoral fellow with Julius “Julie” Axelrod at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) circa 1963–1965, a typical postdoctoral fellow might write several papers in a year. While snail mail and other technical limitations slowed progress, the overall research/publication process then was substantially briefer than now. The latency between initiating a project and writing a paper was often under a year, while today the process typically comprises 5 years or more. These discrepancies are perplexing, because today’s tools of biomedical research are vastly more powerful than those of 40–50 years ago. The techniques of molecular biology can provide definitive answers rather than mere suggestions. Why does it take so much longer to move from test tube to the printed page? One element is a journal review process that is substantially lengthier, especially in terms of experiments required to address the concerns of referees. To anticipate such referee responses, scientists preemptively carry forward experimentation more exhaustively than is necessary to document their assertions. Yet, we can clone genes in a couple of days. Shouldn’t we be able to complete experiments to satisfy reviewers in a few weeks rather than the 7–12 months typically consumed in revision, not to mention the many years devoted to developing the original manuscript? If one spends 5 years accumulating the data for a manuscript and … [↵][1]1E-mail: ssnyder{at}jhmi.edu. [1]: #xref-corresp-1-1