Agreeing to disagree, some ironies, disappointing scientific practice and a call for better: reply to <<The poor performance of TMM on microRNA-Seq>>

Abstract

This letter is a response to a Divergent Views article entitled <<The poor performance of TMM on microRNA-Seq>> (Garmire and Subramaniam 2013), which was a response to our Divergent Views article entitled <<miRNA-seq normalization comparisons need improvement>> (Zhou et al. 2013). Using reproducible code examples, we showed that they incorrectly used our normalization method and highlighted additional concerns with their study. Here, I wish to debunk several untrue or misleading statements made by the authors (hereafter referred to as GS) in their response. Unlike GSs, my claims are supported by R code, citations and email correspondences. I finish by making a call for better practice.