[karen z]

I hate to bring this up but medical research (in general) is widely viewed by academicians as being some of the easiest work to get published. Most medical researchers (certainly not some of the brilliant full-time medical researchers we see and hear at the major conferences) do not have a great deal of research training (that is, their degrees are NOT research degrees like Ph.D.s). I have seen statistics awhile ago on rejection rates for say psychology journals (on average) and medical journals and you don't want to know about these. Most doctors who conduct research will be very upfront and talk about their lack of training in research design and analysis.