Charlton Bruce G
Med Hypotheses. 2008;70(5):905-9. doi: 10.1016/j.mehy.2008.01.016. Epub 2008 Feb 15.
A new collection of ideas from Medical Hypotheses by Roger Dobson is entitled Death can be cured and 99 other Medical Hypotheses. It consists of humorous summaries of Medical Hypotheses articles from the past 30 years. The book's humour derives mainly from the subject matter, although sometimes also from the 'unconventional' approach of the authors with respect to matters such as evidence, argument or inference. Medical Hypotheses has generated such a lot of apparently- or actually-bizarre ideas because it aims to be open to potentially revolutionary science. The journal's official stance is that more harm is done by a failure to publish one idea that might have been true, than by publishing a dozen ideas that turn out to be false. Bizarre ideas tend to catch attention, and may stimulate a valuable response--even when a paper is mostly-wrong. A paper may be flawed but still contain the germ of an idea that can be elaborated and developed. The journal review process is susceptible to both false positives and false negatives. False positives occur when we publish an idea that is wrong; false negatives occur when we fail to publish an important idea that is right, and a potential scientific breakthrough never happens. False positives are more obvious, since the paper will be ignored, refuted, or fail to be replicated--and often attracts criticism and controversy. Editors may therefore take the more cautious path of avoiding false positives more assiduously than false negatives; however, this policy progressively favours less-ambitious science. Consequently, in Medical Hypotheses the 'set point' of risk is nearer to the false positive end of the spectrum than for most journals - and the publication of many apparently-bizarre papers is a natural consequence of this policy.
罗杰·多布森所著的《医学假说》新选集名为《死亡可治及其他99个医学假说》。它包含了对过去30年里《医学假说》杂志文章的幽默总结。这本书的幽默主要源于主题内容，不过有时也源于作者在证据、论证或推理等问题上的“非传统”方法。《医学假说》催生了大量明显或实际离奇的观点，因为它旨在对可能具有革命性的科学持开放态度。该杂志的官方立场是，未能发表一个可能正确的观点所造成的危害，比发表一打最终被证明错误的观点所造成的危害更大。离奇的观点往往会吸引关注，并可能引发有价值的回应——即使一篇论文大部分是错误的。一篇论文可能有缺陷，但仍可能包含一个可以阐述和发展的思想萌芽。期刊评审过程容易出现误判为阳性和误判为阴性的情况。误判为阳性是指我们发表了一个错误的观点；误判为阴性是指我们未能发表一个正确的重要观点，从而导致一个潜在的科学突破从未发生。误判为阳性更为明显，因为这篇论文会被忽视、反驳或无法被重复验证——而且往往会引发批评和争议。因此，编辑们可能会采取更谨慎的做法，比起避免误判为阴性，更加勤勉地避免误判为阳性；然而，这种政策会逐渐倾向于不那么有雄心的科学。因此，在《医学假说》中，风险的“设定点”比大多数期刊更接近光谱的误判为阳性一端——许多明显离奇的论文得以发表就是这一政策的自然结果。
