The journal Science is adding an extra round of statistical checks to its peer-review process, editor-in-chief Marcia McNutt announced today. The policy follows similar efforts from other journals, after widespread concern that basic mistakes in data analysis are contributing to the irreproducibility of many published research findings.

    “Readers must have confidence in the conclusions published in our journal,” writes McNutt in an editorial. Working with the American Statistical Association, the journal has appointed seven experts to a statistics board of reviewing editors (SBoRE). Manuscript will be flagged up for additional scrutiny by the journal’s internal editors, or by its existing Board of Reviewing Editors or by outside peer reviewers. The SBoRE panel will then find external statisticians to review these manuscripts.

    Asked whether any particular papers had impelled the change, McNutt said, “The creation of the ‘statistics board’ was motivated by concerns broadly with the application of statistics and data analysis in scientific research and is part of Science’s overall drive to increase reproducibility in the research we publish.”

    Giovanni Parmigiani, a biostatistician at the Harvard School of Public Health, a member of the SBoRE group, says he expects the board to “play primarily an advisory role.” He agreed to join because he “found the foresight behind the establishment of the SBoRE to be novel, unique and likely to have a lasting impact. This impact will not only be through the publications in Science itself, but hopefully through a larger group of publishing places that may want to model their approach after Science.”

    John Ioannidis, a physician who studies research methodology, says that the policy is “a most welcome step forward” and “long overdue.” “Most journals are weak in statistical review, and this damages the quality of what they publish. I think that, for the majority of scientific papers nowadays, statistical review is more essential than expert review,” he says. But he noted that biomedical journals such as Annals of Internal Medicine, the Journal of the American Medical Association and The Lancet pay strong attention to statistical review.

    Professional scientists are expected to know how to analyze data, but statistical errors are alarmingly common in published research, according to David Vaux, a cell biologist. Researchers should improve their standards, he wrote in 2012, but journals should also take a tougher line, “engaging reviewers who are statistically literate and editors who can verify the process”. Vaux says that Science’s idea to pass some papers to statisticians “has some merit, but a weakness is that it relies on the board of reviewing editors to identify ‘the papers that need scrutiny’ in the first place”.

答案精析：根据题干可直接定位到第一段。由首段第一句可知，《科学》杂志宣布在同行评审过程中增加一轮额外的统计检查。之后说到该政策遵循了其他期刊的类似做法，由此可直接推断出各个杂志社都在加强他们的统计审核。B项中的strengthening与原文中的adding an extra round相对应，故正确答案为B。

错项排除：根据上述分析，A项意思明显和原文意思相悖，故排除A。原文首段最后指出，此前人们普遍担心，数据分析中的基本错误导致许多已发表的研究成果无法重现，因此C项内容与文意不符，故排除C。原文说的是数据分析存在错误，而非缺乏数据分析，而且首段内容也并未提到数据分析是否缺乏的问题，故D项内容排除。

长难句分析：The policy follows similar efforts from other journals, after widespread concern that basic mistakes in data analysis are contributing to the irreproducibility of many published research findings.

本句为主从复合句，句子主干是The policy follows similar efforts from other journals，逗号后的after widespread concern为介宾结构作句子的时间状语，从句中的that引导同位语从句，修饰前面的concern，用于解释concern的具体内容。

句意为：该政策遵循了其他期刊的类似做法，这么做是由于人们普遍担心，数据分析中的基本错误正导致许多已发表的研究成果无法复制。