What's wrong with this pic?!?!?!?!

For any of us in the realm of research we all know how  submitting our findings to a journal is always a fun process. The peer review process is typically daunting and stressful. Statistically, the paper will not be published in the first round. So, we gear ourselves for reviewers comments, which most of the time are for lack of a better word CRAP!!! Not crap because they disagree with us (well maybe just a little) but usually because they pretend to understand our work when they really do not.

About a week ago, I was reading this article, when I found something interesting. First, I was interested in the article because I am studying Transverse Tubules and was looking at the methods in this paper. As I was reading, I came across a figure looking at protein expression using western blot analysis. If you are unfamiliar with what western blots are here is a link explaining them. I have always had issues with many westerns I  have seen in papers for reasons I won't go into here but as I was looking at the data in this paper something caught my eye. If you look at the pic below and focus on figure E you'll see a western for two proteins PLN (phospholamban: helps regulate Ca) and GAPDH (involved in glycolysis). But what else do you see????? Wait..wait..wait for it......Yes, it is the same exact blot (picture). 

How can they look exactly the same? Well, they can not. For them to be the same is bascially impossible. In addition, the GAPDH in C and F are the same as well. So, either the author was dumb enough to copy and paste the image in the SAME exact figure or it is a mistake. Now we all know mistakes happen, but that is not the point. The point is there are 11 authors on this paper. Yes, 11!!!! In addition, this paper was reviewed by most likely 3 scientists. So, how did they miss this? I happened to just be skimming the article and something caught my eye. P.S. I forgot to tell you that the Journal Hypertension is a very good journal. For my 'Sciency' friends it has an impact factor of 6.9 and is the #1 ranked journal in the niche of hypertension and # 4 in the ralm of vascular diseases. Ohhh and it's a journal for the American Heart Association.

So, you may say...Ian, what's the big deal and I would say great question! The big deal is we have all been hearing for a while now how science in this country is going downnnnnn. This is just an example of a much, much , much bigger picture of the state of science in our country. I have been working on a post for far too long which, will  talk about the many aspects to the 'State of Science" these days. I just haven't had the time to finish it. So, I figured I would post this as a segway to my future blog post about math and science in the USA.

The moral to the story for all my friends in the science arena is....... don't stress too much about the reviewers comments. They probably critiqued your paper while on the toilet!

Unitl next time.....

The brain of a scientist!!!

Hi all,

As I sit at my desk waiting for cells (myocytes) to be isolated, I quickly jumped to the Huffington's post Science section to do some reading. If you have not been to this site, you should. It  consists of interesting articles from an array of scientific disciplines. Most of the articles are written in a way that most everyone can understand.

I think that many times I get on my wife's nerves because I am so skeptical about things. I try to explain that's how the mind of  a scientist works. I will always try to disprove something first, which is usually easy when I hear something that is 'Psuedoscientific" in nature.

I found this article that really breaks down how we think. The author is an astronomer and uses his niche of research to explain how his brain works when he recently saw a headline that said the Planet Venus is slowing down.

I will write a lot about how we think as scientist's in the future, but thought this was a good start!!

Finally.... I Started A BLOG!!!! Better late than never.

Welcome Everyone! I have been thinking of starting a blog dedicated to my thoughts about all things science for far too long. So, finally here it is....

This blog is titled "Not So Basic Science" and you may be asking why. Well, there is nothing basic about Basic science, ask any of the postdocs in my department or former PhD classmates. Essentially, everyday we dive into uncharted waters and try to make discoveries that can be translated to the clinical field to cure,treat and prevent disease. This kind of work is hard, frustrating, sometimes thankless and at times incredibly rewarding.

My plan is to not make this blog too structured. Some days I may go on a rant, tell a joke, give my opinion or simply explain something 'Sciency' that you may not know or is a myth. There is so much garbage, lies and misinformation out there and I hope to spread some scientific education along the way.

I hope you all enjoy this blog and I welcome all comments. PS-please subscribe, follow and tell your friends about it.

In a future post I will explain what I do, but I think this comic strip sums it up...Replace postdoc with PhD in this comic and it explains my life...



Best,
Ian