28 MAY 2015 by ideonexus
How Scammers Distort Science
So why should you care? People who are desperate for reliable information face a bewildering array of diet guidance—salt is bad, salt is good, protein is good, protein is bad, fat is bad, fat is good—that changes like the weather. But science will figure it out, right? Now that we’re calling obesity an epidemic, funding will flow to the best scientists and all of this noise will die down, leaving us with clear answers to the causes and treatments.
Or maybe not. Even the well-funded, serious r... 1 
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notesA case study where a scientist fooled the media, muddying the waters of nutritional information.
25 MAY 2015 by ideonexus
Brian Christian: Scientific Knowledge Should Be Structure...
In my view, what's most outmoded within science, most badly in need of retirement, is the way we structure and organize scientific knowledge itself. Academic literature, even as it moves online, is a relic of the era of typesetting, modeled on static, irrevocable, toothpaste-out-of-the-tube publication. Just as the software industry has moved from a "waterfall" process to an "agile" process—from monolithic releases shipped from warehouses of mass-produced disks to over-the-air differential up...Folksonomies: peer review
Folksonomies: peer review
1 notes
notes21 APR 2014 by ideonexus
The Extended Peer Community
The perspective of Funtowicz and Ravetz on post normal science [59] – characterized by conflicting values and deep uncertainties – is useful in moving forward on messes and wicked problems. When the stakes are high and uncertainties are large, Funtowicz and Ravetz point out that there is demand by the public to participate and assess quality, which they refer to as the extended peer community. The extended peer community consists not only of those with traditional institutional accreditation ... 1 notes
notesAn argument for open science that we should bring climate change science to the public to appeal on science not consensus.
21 JUN 2012 by ideonexus
Criticism is Doing You a Favor
[N]o scientist likes to be criticized. ... But you don't reply to critics: "Wait a minute, wait a minute; this is a really good idea. I'm very fond of it. It's done you no harm. Please don't attack it." That's not the way it goes. The hard but just rule is that if the ideas don't work, you must throw them away. Don't waste any neurons on what doesn't work. Devote those neurons to new ideas that better explain the data. Valid criticism is doing you a favor.Folksonomies: peer review criticism
Folksonomies: peer review criticism
1 notes
notesValid criticism frees you of the chains of a bad idea.
21 JUN 2012 by ideonexus
The Importance of Peer Review
Nobody knows more than a tiny fragment of science well enough to judge its validity and value at first hand. For the rest he has to rely on views accepted at second hand on the authority of a community of people accredited as scientists. But this accrediting depends in its turn on a complex organization. For each member of the community can judge at first hand only a small number of his fellow members, and yet eventually each is accredited by all. What happens is that each recognizes as scien...Folksonomies: science peer review
Folksonomies: science peer review
1 notes
notesEach of us can only understand a small portion of science, thus we need a collaboration of mind to determine truth.
12 JAN 2012 by ideonexus
More Scientific Papers are Published Than Can Possibly be...
We should admit in theory what is already very largely a case in practice, that the main currency of scientific information is the secondary sources in the forms of abstracts, reports, tables, &c., and that the primary sources are only for detailed reference by very few people. It is possible that the fate of most scientific papers will be not to be read by anyone who uses them, but with luck they will furnish an item, a number, some facts or data to such reports which may, but usually wi...
1 We must accept, therefore, that most work will go unnoticed and unacknowledged.
04 JAN 2012 by ideonexus
Enemies Make the Best Peer Reviewers
One way of dealing with errors is to have friends who are willing to spend the time necessary to carry out a critical examination of the experimental design beforehand and the results after the experiments have been completed. An even better way is to have an enemy. An enemy is willing to devote a vast amount of time and brain power to ferreting out errors both large and small, and this without any compensation. The trouble is that really capable enemies are scarce; most of them are only ordi...Quoting Georg von Békésy, who says that enemies will work hard to disprove you for free, but sometimes they are ruined by becoming friends.
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
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.
27 JUL 2011 by ideonexus
Science Takes No Sides--and No Prisoners
The great thing about science is that it takes no sides—and no prisoners. Once you know which research to trust, the big picture emerges and myths fade away. To gain my trust, research must pass my “grump factor.” To make it into this book, studies must first have been published in the refereed literature and then successfully replicated. Some results have been confirmed dozens of times. Where I make an exception for cutting-edge research, reliable but not yet fully vetted by the passage of t...Folksonomies: scientific method peer review
Folksonomies: scientific method peer review
1 notes
notesA good summary of what research to take seriously.
08 MAY 2011 by ideonexus
A Neutral Witness
Trust a witness in all matters in which neither his self-interest, his passions, his prejudices, nor the love of the marvellous is strongly concerned. When they are involved, require corroborative evidence in exact proportion to the contravention of probability by the thing testified.
Folksonomies: peer review witness
Folksonomies: peer review witness
Thomas Henry Huxley on when to trust a witness.
