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The term "subject" in abstract is misleading

Posted by csrsanchez on 27 Oct 2011 at 08:20 GMT

Too bad the authors did not mention in the abstract or the article title that the stool samples were derived from rats. Instead, they used the term "subjects" in the abstract -- which makes one think of human subjects.

Competing interests declared: I am a scientific editor and work for a journal other than PLoS ONE.

RE: The term "subject" in abstract is misleading

MattJHodgkinson replied to csrsanchez on 27 Oct 2011 at 10:31 GMT

While that would be indeed be a concern if true - we say in our author guidelines that "where appropriate authors should ensure the title contains information about the species or model system in which a study has been done (for biological papers) or type of study design (for clinical papers)" http://www.plosone.org/st... - the authors in fact state that they used stool samples from eight Finnish children (as described in http://www.nature.com/ism...), not rats.

Competing interests declared: I am an Associate Editor for PLoS ONE.