First, this is a blog. It is highly persuasive, but it is Dr. Nisbet's opinion, based upon some unfortunate timing, and I do not believe him. The reason I don't believe him is that I have written for some of these publications, both in my own name and as an assistant to researchers. I have never, ever--not even on stem cells--received any pressure to meet a deadline related to an external political event. Scientific publications are not totally innocent and they do make serious errors. The Hwang stem cell papers debacle two years ago is one of them, where false research was hyped. But to accuse the editors of attempting to influence a vote is nonsense. Why would researchers who are going to benefit from allowing human embryonic stem cell research on discarded human embryos to proceed want their research on other methods published at the time of a vote? (They are all learning from each other here, Nobel Prize hunger notwithstanding.) This would make no sense. That said, yes, editors are always looking to push the sexiest research, which means less sexy research sometimes needs to go into less highly cited journals. The Nature journals are the top cited in the field. If your stem cell research is similar to research they've already published, it gets rejected. But journals get a ton of submissions of papers on stem cell research and they can't publish all of them. Sometimes, editors like to publish a group of papers on related subtopics in the same issue. When you submit a paper, the editor may say, "We like it and hope to put it into the June issue with another one we've received." But peer review, the need to correct and revise, and sometimes the need to produce more data, may delay publication. Sometimes, authors will ask that papers from their colleagues all be published together, and, if it makes sense, the editor may try to honor that request. But timing of publication tends to be much more fluid than Dr. Nisbet indicates. I urge him to contact the Nature and Cell Stem Cell editors and ask them directly what influenced the timing of the publications. (By the way, if members of Congress knew more about stem cells, they would understand that these recent studies are interesting, but they do not negate the need for working on human embryonic cells at this time.)