Biomed: What is wrong with this picture? – Shutting the stable door - On Biology

Biomed
 
Our new editorial series ‘What is wrong with this picture?’ has attracted some gratifying attention in the social media since it was launched in August, as well as in Mozilla Science’s Week in review and Weekend reads on Retraction Watch.

There has also been feedback from readers that suggests, in a way, that we’re the wrong people to be delivering its message.

The series, aimed at authors, illustrates some common ways in which scientific figures can mislead or obscure information, and was part of our recent efforts on reproducibility, accompanying the launch of a pilot ‘reproducibility checklist’ that authors are now required to complete before submitting a manuscript.

But the most important point to emerge from the feedback from readers so far (see samples below) is that the lessons it teaches ought to be taught, and learned, long before people are reading editorial comments in journals.....