A Plea for Self-Critique in Rheumatology

It had been shown that authors do not frequently acknowledge the limitations of the work that lead to scientific articles. Limitations of scientific reports are mainly of two kinds. First is the frank acknowledgment by the authors, with its reasons, of the category in which their article best belongs, like original, confirmatory,exploratory, and so forth. Second is an open discussion of validity. This second limitation might be more involved than generally considered. We also had the impression that the relative lack of self-critique was more true for articles in basic science. A formal survey of three leading rheumatology journals confirmed our hypothesis. The possible reasons for this relative lack in basic sciences is discussed as well as is how best to voice limitations.