Socialism in science, or why Open Access may ultimately fail

“Open Access is the best thing since sliced bread” I hear a lot of scientists say. The blogosphere overflows with enthusiastic support for OA. Hey, even I expressed some guarded optimism in some of my previous posts. This unconditional love for the NewestAndHawtest publishing model is very common, but is it really justified? More importantly still, will those same ardent OA supporters put their money where their mouths are? I am not so sure.

Promises and obstacles of open access science – Thus Spake John Wilbanks

Anyone knows who John Wilbanks is? Well, I just found out. Recently a post on slashdot caught my attention – it was both science-y and geeky – a combo I simply couldn’t resist. It linked to an interview with the said John Wilbanks, where he speaks very wisely indeed about some of the central issues of modern science: scientific communication, open access publishing, data accessibility and storage, and more. John is VP of Science at Creative Commons (article on Wikipedia) an organization whose sole purpose is to make it easier for people to share their creative work if they so desire (check out this movie on YouTube for a no-brainer explanation of how it works, and this website for another movie on how it relates to science). As the interview is rather lengthy, I decided to summarize its main themes in this post, and, well, I wouldn’t be myself if I didn’t take the liberty to venture a few opinions of my own.

Research paper 2.0 – Part 4 – Summary

In my three recent posts I have expounded on what I think is the way scientific publications should look and feel like in the 21st century (Part1, Part2, Part3). So is there a take home message? I believe there is.

Way to go ORI!!!

A while ago I commented on the highly publicized case of scientific misconduct committed by Dr. Luk van Parijs from MIT. It looks like the Office for Research Integrity is at last really after the asses of those cheating bastards. In the current issue of NIH funding opportunities and notices, there are no less than three notices about scientific misconduct discovered both in the NIH intramural section, and in two top-notch research universities, UCLA and UCSF. I am really happy that they send out these notices along with grant-related info. It sends an important message to anyone who thinks that copy-paste is an appropriate method of replicating n=1 results when a publication in MCB or Lancet or a life-saving R01 is at stake. I still find the punishments to be very lax in relation to the crimes, but it is a good trend and will hopefully trigger a landslide of exposures of fishy laboratory practices in academia. Keep it up, ORI!

Update: writedit was, once again, faster than me at spotting the news

Primum non nocere!

The Web is rife with news stories regarding a paper just published in PLOS Medicine about a benign tumor that arose in a child treated with fetal neural “stem cell” therapy for ataxia telangiectasia in a Moscow clinic. Most of the reports are total crap, showing typical journalistic dilettantism, and spreading “stem cells are BAD” FUD. Just about the best news story I was able to find on the subject is (not surprisingly) on The Scientist website. The discussion that follows is also pretty interesting, so if you have a subscrption, be sure to check it out. There are a few points, however, I would like to elaborate on a bit further.

Research paper 2.0 – Part 3 – Multimedia

In my two previous posts I have discussed how the new and improved research paper 2.0 should behave regarding supplementary information and readers’ comments. Now it’s time to really embrace the newest trends and to talk about multimedia. Take, for example, this paper in Nature. It’s about the influence of temperature of the brain on the speed of songbird song formation. When I first heard about it on their podcast, I thought – well here’s a study that takes full advantage of multimedia. Sure enough, the podcast contained some really awesome recordings of the songbird chirping. You can imagine my surprise when I discovered that the actual paper does NOT have a recording attached to it, even in the well-hidden supplementary information section. Well, that just doesn’t make sense.

Research paper 2.0 – Part 2 – Readers’ comments

In my previous post, I have talked about how I find it simply outrageous that serious scientific journals still treat the so called “supplementary information” as some kind of data dump, where no proper formatting is required and where noblesse does not oblige. This made me think about what other features of the current state of scientific publishing are lagging behind the available technology.

One of the distinguishing features of Web 2.0 is its interactive character. Back in the early days of Internet the websites were static and only rarely updated. Nowadays, however, the Web bustles with activity, with blogs, e-zines, discussion fora, and wikis changing their content on a daily, even hourly basis. It is the public that shapes the Web, not some chosen few. So why not adopt some of that democratic approach in scientific publishing?

Research paper 2.0 – how much longer do we have to wait?

I was absolutely delighted this Friday when I clicked on the hyperlink pointing to a supplementary figure in a PDF version of a paper in PNAS. You will never guess what happened! Adobe Acrobat actually downloaded the whole of the supplementary information section and appended it to the current document, and, here’s the biggest surprise – it was NOT some half-assed, slightly upgraded version of “data not shown”, with figure legends separated from the actual figures, and a big “DRAFT” watermark in the background. It actually looked and felt like a legitimate part of the paper. Is this a sign of the times? Is it actually happening? Are we going to finally get SI sections whose reading is not akin to the Chinese water torture? Guess not…

Teaching students stuff vs. teaching them to think

In his excellent column in this month’s The Scientist Steven Wiley touches upon an extremely important subject. Against his intuition and in accordance with his students’ suggestions, he and his colleagues decided to design a cell biology course aimed at teaching the attendees to critically analyze available information rather than teaching them bare facts. Information overload is typically a major source of whining and ranting among the student population, so the author reasoned that the students would be delighted to finally do away with rota memorization and all-nighters before the exam. And the students… well, the students totally hated it! Steven goes on to describe the reasons why the students were dissatisfied with such a seemingly perfect solution, so check out his full article, but I want to talk about something else: the utter absurdity of trying to teach people to think.

Why I (no longer?) hate the phrase “underrepresented minorities”

I used to cringe with disgust whenever I heard of the so called “underrepresented minorities”. I would get all red in the face, hyperventilate, and start ranting about how supporting these people is just reverse discrimination, how it is taking money away from the most meritorious and so on, and so forth. To hell with all political correctness! Now don’t get me wrong, I think that underprivileged members of the society deserve some degree of stimulus so that the ones with the most potential are not hindered in their dreams by their poverty and so that we can avoid a polarization of the society a la France on the eve of the Revolution.  BUT, my reasoning so far has been that this stimulus should be applied on the basis of one’s financial status, NOT their ethnic background or the color of their skin. I have, however, been missing one important point…