24 JAN 2015 by ideonexus

 Technology is Information

The most revolutionary aspect of technology is its mobility. Anybody can learn it. It jumps easily over barriers of race and language. And its mobility is still increasing. The new technology of microchips and computer software is learned much faster than the old technology of coal and iron. It took three generations of misery for the older industrial countries to master the technology of coal and iron. The new industrial countries of East Asia, South Korea and Singapore and Taiwan, mastered ...
  1  notes
 
03 SEP 2011 by ideonexus

 How Peer Review Hurts Science

In my considered opinion the peer review system, in which proposals rather than proposers are reviewed, is the greatest disaster visited upon the scientific community in this century. No group of peers would have approved my building the 72-inch bubble chamber. Even Ernest Lawrence told me he thought I was making a big mistake. He supported me because he knew my track record was good. I believe that U.S. science could recover from the stultifying effects of decades of misguided peer reviewing...
Folksonomies: peer review
Folksonomies: peer review
  1  notes

An interesting argument that the peer review process hurts science because ideas are evaluated by themselves, while the track record of the scientist should be considered.