Refining early-TIPS criteria requires good quality prognostic studies

Reviewing in science requires quality criteria and professional reviewers.

The use of peers to assess the work of scientists goes back to the 17th century and finally led to what we call peer review (Kronick, 1990) or review by competitors (Roy and Ashburn, 2001). Usually peers are external experts not paid for their assessment. Recent studies of the effectiveness and quality of our current peer review system are not reassuring (Godlee and Jefferson, 1999; Jefferson e...

Good decision making requires good communication.

The methods used for regulatory decisions must facilitate three kinds of communication: (i) with individual experts who must translate their knowledge into usable form; (ii) among the experts whose pooled knowledge informs those choices; and (iii) between regulators and those affected by their choices. Decision-making methods vary in their reliance on expert judgement and computational methods ...

Tips on Being a Good Discussant

We hope that you will find that being a discussant is a very worthwhile endeavor. Developing the skills of a good discussant pays off in several ways. It is something that economists are often asked to do. The same skills that you develop to be a good discussant will also be used in your future responsibility as a journal referee. Learning how to read other papers with the critical eye of a goo...

Early-stage melanoma: staging criteria and prognostic modeling.

Accurate risk assessment is central to the process of making rational surgical and systemic treatment recommendations for melanoma patients and in establishing appropriate clinical trial stratification criteria. The current American Joint Commission on Cancer melanoma staging system incorporated relevant prognostic variables to provide a framework for the estimation of risk for recurrence; howe...

Tips for making a good research proposal.