On 2014 Jan 27, William Hollingworth commented:

I'd like to reinforce Dr Coyne's point about the advantages of PubMed Commons over the much slower, traditional method of communication still used by journals like the Journal of Clinical Oncology.

5th September 2013: Our online paper and the accompanying editorial were published on the JCO website. The editorial, which we had not previously seen, was quite critical and contained several points that we wanted to respond to.

10th Sept 2013: We submitted our letter of response to JCO. After a couple of enquiries, I was told that our letter couldn't be published for several months.

17th Dec 2013: Our letter was accepted.

14th Jan 2014: Proofs, conflict of interest, authorship statement for the letter received and returned.

I'm still not sure when our letter will appear in the journal or on its website.

The 4+ month delay clearly stifles debate and favours the editorialist (who has immediate right of reply) over the authors (who have to wait). Next time I'll respond through PubMed Commons.

On 2013 Nov 14, James C Coyne commented:

This is an exceptionally transparent report of a clinical trial that was intended to improve cancer patients' level of distress by introducing routine screening. The results were that screen patients did not have lower levels of distress and did not appreciably increase their use of specialized psychosocial and mental health services. Cost data suggest that it took about $28 to screen one patient, the screening was not cost-effective.

This kind of data is sorely needed to evaluate implementation of screening versus other possible uses of the same resources. Unfortunately, when this article came out in Journal of Clincal Oncology, it was accompanied by a negative editorial commentary. Apparently the authors of the study had no forewarning or opportunity to respond. Moreover, this article is behind a pay wall, but the attack on it in the same journal is freely available.

Here's the attack on it Carlson LE, 2013 and here's a link to my blog post <http://blogs.plos.org/mindthebrain/2013/11/08/wheres-the-evidence-that-screening-for-distress-benefits-cancer-patients/

discussing all the implications of such a use use of invited commentaries by advocacy groups to discredit negative findings would contradict their claims of benefit from accepting their practice recommendations. It's good that we have PubMed Commons so that such invited commentaries do not become the last word in evaluating studies.

On 2013 Nov 14, James C Coyne commented:

This is an exceptionally transparent report of a clinical trial that was intended to improve cancer patients' level of distress by introducing routine screening. The results were that screen patients did not have lower levels of distress and did not appreciably increase their use of specialized psychosocial and mental health services. Cost data suggest that it took about $28 to screen one patient, the screening was not cost-effective.

This kind of data is sorely needed to evaluate implementation of screening versus other possible uses of the same resources. Unfortunately, when this article came out in Journal of Clincal Oncology, it was accompanied by a negative editorial commentary. Apparently the authors of the study had no forewarning or opportunity to respond. Moreover, this article is behind a pay wall, but the attack on it in the same journal is freely available.

Here's the attack on it Carlson LE, 2013 and here's a link to my blog post <http://blogs.plos.org/mindthebrain/2013/11/08/wheres-the-evidence-that-screening-for-distress-benefits-cancer-patients/

discussing all the implications of such a use use of invited commentaries by advocacy groups to discredit negative findings would contradict their claims of benefit from accepting their practice recommendations. It's good that we have PubMed Commons so that such invited commentaries do not become the last word in evaluating studies.