Validity of Canadian studies: Response of editor in chief of Nutrition

doi:10.1136/bmj.328.7437.465-c

BMJ 2004;328:465 (21 February), doi:10.1136/bmj.328.7437.465-c

Letter

Validity of Canadian studies

Response of editor in chief of Nutrition

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

EDITOR—Concerning the Chandra debate¹: if Chandra wereto provide the details of the study methodology and the originaldata as requested by his critics, wouldn't the debate end?

The scientific process encompasses (a) the careful conduct ofthe researcher and his or her team, or both, and the acquisitionof credible data; (b) the description of the research in a manuscript,with presentation of the data and logical interpretation, suchthat fellow scientists can reproduce the data; (c) a peer reviewsystem of the manuscript before publication; (d) the scrutinyof the data by readers of the paper after publication; and (e)the independent reproducibility of the data on the basis ofthe methods reported in the paper in the long term.