Article importance: Processes to evaluate the success of published articles are subjective

Despite the development of protocols to improve medical research, the determination of a research report’s importance still relies on intuition as much as adherence to guidelines.1 It is a problem that affects articles before and after publication. No editor wants to inappropriately reject a report, such as that submitted by Bruce Glick and Timothy Chang, postgraduate students at Ohio State University, to Science regarding a mix-up in the laboratory. Chang mistakenly used Glick’s chickens, whose bursae of Fabricius had been removed by Glick, to teach students how to raise antibodies. They discovered the role of the bursa in antibody production. The editor at Science did not fault the methodology, but rejected the submission on the grounds that their findings would have insufficient interest for their readers. Foolishly, they heeded his poor advice and published in Poultry Science.