FVIII, Protein C and the Risk of Arterial Thrombosis: More than the Sum of Its Parts.

Peer review is not a pissing contest. Peer reviewing is not about findings the smallest of errors and delay publication because of it. Peer review is not about being right. Peer review is not about rewriting the paper under review. Peer review is not about asking for yet another experiment.

 

Peer review is about making sure that the conclusions presented in the paper are justified by the data presented and peer review is about helping the authors get the best report on what they did.

At least that what I try to remind myself of when I write my peer review report. So what happened when I wrote a peer review about a paper presenting data on the two hemostatic factors protein C and FVIII in relation to arterial thrombosis. These two proteins are known to have a direct interaction with each other. But does this also translate into the situation where a combination of the two risk factors of the “have both, get extra risk for free”?

There are two approaches to test so-called interaction: statistical and biological. The authors presented one approach, while I thought the other approach was better suited to analyze and interpret the data. Did that result in an academic battle of arguments, or perhaps a peer review deadlock? No, the authors were quite civil to entertain my rambling thoughts and comments with additional analyses and results, but convinced me in the end that their approach have more merit in this particular situation. The editor of thrombosis and hemostasis saw this all going down and agreed with my suggestion that an accompanying editorial on this topic to help the readers understand what actually happened during the peer review process. The nice thing about this is that the editor asked me to that editorial, which can be found here, the paper by Zakai et al can be found here.

All this learned me a thing or two about peer review: Cordial peer review is always better (duh!) than a peer review street brawl, and that sharing aspects from the peer review process could help readers understand the paper in more detail. Open peer review, especially the parts where peer review is not anonymous and reports are open to readers after publication, is a way to foster both practices. In the meantime, this editorial will have to do.