Themes that Cut Across
Disciplines: Quality Control and
Research Methods
Faina Linkov, PhD
Research Assistant Professor
University of Pittsburgh Cancer Institute
The journey of quality control in the Supercourse
The journey of a thousand miles starts with a single step

• Overview the history of quality control and peer review
• Quality control on Amazon.com
• Quality control in the Supercourse: QC on
PPT lectures is at the core of what we do
• Supercourse studies of quality control
• Our conclusions and future directions

What do scientists have in common?
• Quest for discovery
• Common research methods, such as statistics
• Journal article format
• Quality control mechanisms
• Peer review: is it the same as quality?

• 384-322 BCE-Aristotle and the birth of peer review
• 854-931 “Ethics of the Physician” by Ishap bin Ali Al Rahwi-first documented description of peer review in Medicine

Philosophical Transactions- Originally edited by Henry Oldenburg
First peer reviewed journal
1665

Typewriter: the tool that fueled peer review process
1890’s

Quality control criteria of the past
Albert Einstein, 1905
His famous work,
Annus Mirabilis, was not peer reviewed!

19th century – birth of quality control discipline
1950 - W. Edwards
Deming and statistical quality control
1970’s- Total Quality
Management (TQM)

“ Doing the right thing right, right away”
W. Edwards Deming, 1982
“a measure of goodness that relates to the intended use of a product and the expectations customers have concerning this product”
Barkman, 1989

Traditional Quality control of
Scientific Materials: Peer Review
“ A peer-reviewed journal is one that has submitted most of its published articles for review by experts who are not part of the editorial staff ”
Vancouver Group of Editors

Is peer review the same as quality?
South Korean cloning scandal, alongside with other examples, demonstrate that peer review is not perfect

Peer review congress: finding new ways or fixing the old system?

The State of QC for PowerPoint on the Web
• Over 7,600,000
PowerPoint files on the
Internet give us unique new ways to do QC
• Only 3383 lectures tested for QC-Supercourse
• We published almost all articles concerning the state QC of PowerPoint on the web

Amazon.com: the first website that allowed to post a book review

• No information on quality control for
PowerPoint lectures on-line
• There is a growing need to establish quality control for Scientific PPT lectures on Line
• Migration of 7 million lectures to the web by
2008
• Establishment of “Quality Circles” in the
Supercourse: John Last, Vint Cerf, and many others

Progress Report in the
Supercourse
Over 14000 lecture reviews were obtained in the last 6 years
Lecture review forms utilize Likert like scales, regularly used for the evaluation of educational programs and amazon, ebay, consumers reports..

Space for written comments
Some of the URLs have changed since the lecture was developed.
It would be helpful if that was corrected, so you could actually see the information referred to.
Is there any text(s) that you could recommend for epidemiology, i.e., a basic text, an intermediate text, and an advanced text?

First evaluation of peer review mechanisms for
PPT lectures on-line

Results and conclusions of this research
• Lectures were rated highly by experts and nonexperts
• People are primarily rating at the upper tail of the distribution
• There is a poor agreement among reviewers
(very low Kappa statistic)
• The role of personal background in the quality of the peer review is not clear and needs to be further investigated
• There is a pressing need for scientific evaluation of PPT lectures on the web

Implications for the Supercourse of
Science?
• There is no consistency about the use of peer review on the web
• Utility of peer review strategies for PPT lectures is not clear
• New approaches will be developed for the
Supercourse of Science.
• Shall we allow disciplines to decide the QC techniques which are most applicable for their fields?
• There is a need to build a science of QC

Where do we go from here for the development of quality control mechanisms in the Supercourse?
Continuous quality improvement (CQI): not a destination, but a journey

To scientifically develop a system of QC on the web by making multiple measures available
Power of the Internet makes the development of the Science of
QC possible.

“… We had great difficulty in finding any real hard evidence of the system’s effectiveness, which is disappointing, as peer review is the cornerstone of editorial policies worldwide”
Tom Jeffersen

Suggested Quality Control
Mechanisms for the Supercourse of
Science: Multiple Measures a) Expert editorial board b) Screening to identify non-appropriate lectures, as done in nature and BMJ c) Five star system (or Priority Score) similar to that in
Amazon.com
d) Opinion of experts (professors) e) Personal Characteristics of authors (rank, university, citations) f) Web statistics for utilization of lectures: hits, links, Page
Rankings, etc.
g) Key note speeches h) Publications and citations from Google Scholar i) Model similar to NIH style review

• John Last, MD
– father of modern environmental epidemiology
• Peter Greenwald, MD, PhD
leading cancer control specialist, NCI
• Paul Zimmet, MD
leading diabetes research in Australia
• Dr. Steven N. Blair
-leader in exercise science
Plus 8 others

Screening to eliminate poor quality lecture
Key criteria for lecture rejection in the parent Supercourse project
• Not related to prevention
• Inaccurate
• Out of date
• Incomplete

5 star :
4 star :
3 star :
2 star :
1 star :
Customer Reviews
<Book title>
42 Reviews
(42)
Average Customer Review
( 42 customer reviews )
Share your thoughts with other customers
(0)
(0)
(0)
(0)

Mean Lecture Scores in the
Supercourse
First 2000 surveys
Mean Score: 4.12

Personal Characteristics of Authors
(rank, university, citations)
1288 authors in the Supercourse
• 30 authors from Harvard
• 8 authors from Johns Hopkins
• 100 authors from Pitt
• 7 authors from Columbia

•Total number of page views
41,406 (since 2003)
•Viewed in 145 countries
•Translated into 13 Languages
•First Google Page Rank for
“lecture on prevention”
•Over 70 websites linking to the lecture
•

Keynote speeches
Someone chosen for keynote address is expected to give a good lecture

NIH Model and Continuous Quality
Monitoring
Submission Triage
Priority
Scores
Resubmission
Supercourse Model: Continuous Quality Control

Google model for QC:
Opportunities for exploration?
• Do not exclude anything, but give it a rank
• Development of search mechanisms where you can find anything you like

“I believe this lecture provides simple, understandable, thorough and consolidated information of the subject.
This is actual service to the humanity”
From the evaluator of the
Supercourse lectures

• There is a need to define the science of
QC for online lectures
• Scientists need to be able to choose what they want in terms of QC mechanisms, including peer review and other systems
• Science needs to replicate success of industry in the area of QC
• Traditional approaches (such as peer review) may not be bad, but with Internet technologies much more can be done

Vision for the Supercourse of
Science
• Development of novel QC systems for the
Supercourse of science.
• Need to systematically and continuously evaluate QC systems
• Upfront QC systems and information collection

super1@pitt.edu