Slashdot Mirror
Who Owns Science?
immerrath writes "The New York Times has an article [Sorry, tomorrow's article, no Google link yet] on a movement that is rapidly gaining support in the scientific community: the Public Library of Science(PLoS). The founders, Nobel Laureate Harold Varmus, Stanford biologist Pat Brown and Berkeley Lab scientist Michael Eisen, argue that scientific literature cannot be privately controlled or owned by the publishers of scientific journals, and must instead be available in public archives freely accessible by anyone and everyone. This has very important implications for the fundamental principle that Science must transcend all economic, national and other barriers. For a while now, PLoS has been trying to get scientific journals to release the rights to scientific papers; many major journals have not complied -- in response, PLoS is starting PLoS-standard-compliant journals (for which they received a $9 million grant from the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation), to demonstrate the validity of the idea and persuade academic publishers to adopt the free access model. They even have a GPL-like open access Licence, and their journals have some very prominent scientists on the editorial board. Here is the text of an earlier Newsweek article about PLoS, and here is a Nature Public Debate explaining the issues. Michael Eisen received the 2002 Benjamin Franklin award for his work on PLoS. Don't forget to sign the PLoS open letter!"
New Premise in Science: Get the Word Out Quickly, Online
.
By AMY HARMON
A group of prominent scientists is mounting an electronic challenge to the leading scientific journals, accusing them of holding back the progress of science by restricting online access to their articles so they can reap higher profits.
Supported by a $9 million grant from the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, the scientists say that this week they will announce the creation of two peer-reviewed online journals on biology and medicine, with the goal of cornering the best scientific papers and immediately depositing them in the public domain.
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By providing a highly visible alternative to what they view as an outmoded system of distributing information, the founders hope science itself will be transformed. The two journals are the first of what they envision as a vast electronic library in which no one has to pay dues or seek permission to read, copy or use the collective product of the world's academic research.
"The written record is the lifeblood of science," said Dr. Harold E. Varmus, a Nobel laureate in medicine who is serving as the chairman of the new nonprofit publisher. "Our ability to build on the old to discover the new is all based on the way we disseminate our results."
By contrast, established journals like Science and Nature charge steep annual subscription fees and bar access to their online editions to nonsubscribers, although Science recently began providing free electronic access to articles a year after publication.
The new publishing venture, Public Library of Science, is an outgrowth of several years of friction between scientists and the journals over who should control access to scientific literature in the electronic age. For most scientists, who typically assign their copyright to the journals for no compensation, the main goal is to distribute their work as widely as possible.
Academic publishers argue that if they made the articles more widely available they would lose the subscription revenue they need to ensure the quality of the editorial process. Far from holding back science, they say, the journals have played a crucial role in its advancement as a trusted repository of significant discovery.
"We have very high standards, and it is somewhat costly," said Dr. Donald Kennedy, the editor of Science. "We're dealing in a market whether we like it or not."
Science estimates that 800,000 people read the magazine electronically now, compared with 140,000 readers of the print version. Given the number of downloads at universities like Harvard and Stanford, which buy site licenses for about $5,000 a year, the magazine says people are reading articles for only a few cents each.
In many cases even such small per-article charges to access a digital database can make for substantial income. The Dutch-British conglomerate Reed Elsevier Group, the world's largest academic publisher, posted a 30 percent profit last year on its science publishing activities. Science took in $34 million last year on advertising alone.
But supporters of the Public Library of Science say the point is not how much money the journals make, but their monopoly control over literature that should belong to the public.
"We would be perfectly happy for them to have huge profit margins providing that in exchange for all this money we're giving them we got to own the literature and the literature did not belong to them," said Dr. Michael B. Eisen, a biologist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and the University of California, and a founder of the Public Library of Science.
When scientists relied on print-and-paper journals to distribute their work, the Library's supporters argue, it made sense to charge for access, since each copy represented an additional expense. But they say that at a time when the Internet has reduced distribution costs to almost zero, a system that grants journals exclusive rights over distribution is no longer necessary.
By publishing on the Internet and forgoing any profits, the new venture says it is now possible to maintain a high-quality journal without charging subscription fees.
Continued
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Me. I'm a 'merican.
Everyone has access to Nature. It is just waiting for someone to find out all its secrets.
But for those that do, it is important that they receive some sort of carrot to keep them motivated. If this means charging for academic journals, then perhaps that's the way to go about it.
Those that would steal their hard work because "Science is for everyone" doesn't quite grasp the concept of the reward system.
I have been pwned because my
Well, this isn't such an obvious answer to the title question. You could say that the slashdot 0wners 'own' science, since they are the ones who post the stuff there. However, the all work for OSDN, who also 0wns the domain, i believe.
Or, you could just say Richard Feynman 0wns J00 because of his hair.
I'm the Devil the Windows users warned you about.
New Premise in Science: Get the Word Out Quickly, Online
(Page 2 of 2)
Instead, the new journals hope institutions that finance research will come to regard publishing as part of the cost. The journals will initially ask most authors to pay about $1,500 per article, for exposure to a wider potential audience and a much faster turnaround time.
The library's founders agree that its success will depend largely on whether leading scholars are willing to forsake the certain status of publishing in the established journals to support the principle of science as a public resource. In a profession where publishing in a top journal is often crucial to success and grant money, that may be a difficult task.
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"I'd be happy to forswear publishing in any of those journals, but I'm not in a position where I need a job," said Dr. Marc Kirschner, chairman of the cell biology department at Harvard Medical School and a member of the electronic library's editorial board. "The difficulty will be getting over this hump from the point where people say, `Why should I risk it?' to where they don't see it as a risk."
In that regard, the Howard Hughes Medical Institute -- the nonprofit institute whose $11 billion endowment makes it a leading supporter of medical research -- has emerged as a powerful ally. Dr. Thomas R. Cech, the institute's president, has publicly endorsed the library's goals and promised to cover its investigators' extra costs of publishing in the new journals.
As for other researchers, "people will want to be associated with this because it is such a good deed," said another member of the library's editorial board, Dr. Nicholas R. Cozzarelli, editor of The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Unfettered access to the literature, library supporters say, would eliminate unnecessary duplication and allow doctors in poor countries, scientists at budget-conscious institutions, high school students, cancer patients and anyone else who could not afford subscriptions to benefit from existing research and add to it.
Moreover, they say, the taxpayers, who spend nearly $40 billion a year on biomedical research, should not have to pay again -- or wait some unspecified period -- to be able to search for and see the results themselves.
But Derk Haank, chairman of Elsevier Science, whose 1,500 journals include Cell, says such criticism is misguided. Elsevier, he says, is offering broader access to its electronic databases to the institutions that want it for far less than the cost of subscribing to dozens of paper journals. "It sounds very sympathetic to say this should be available to the public," he said. "But this kind of material is only used by experts."
Still, in addition to making data available to more people sooner, the electronic library's founders argue that the research itself becomes more valuable when it is not walled off by copyrights and Balkanized in separate electronic databases. They envision the sprouting of a kind of cyber neural network, where all of scientific knowledge can be searched, sorted and grafted with a fluidity that will speed discovery.
Under the library's editorial policy, any data can be integrated into new work as long as the original author is credited appropriately. The model is inspired by GenBank, the central repository of DNA sequences whose open access policy has driven much of the progress in genomics and biotechnology of the last decade.
The library's roots can be traced to Dr. Patrick O. Brown's frustration at the barriers to literature he needed for research at his genetics laboratory at the Stanford University School of Medicine in 1998. "The information I wanted was information scientists had published with the goal of making it available to all their colleagues," he said. "And I couldn't get it readily because of the way the system was organized."
Dr. Varmus, then director of the National Institutes for Health, talked with Dr. Brown in January 1999 and decided to pay for a Web site that would provide free access to peer-reviewed scientific literature. PubMedCentral (www.pubmedcentral.gov) was opened the next year.
By a year later, however, only a handful of journals had decided to participate in the government archive. In an effort to whip up enthusiasm, Drs. Varmus, Brown and Eisen began circulating an open letter to the journals, asking them to place their articles in a free online database.
The petition quickly garnered 30,000 signers around the world, including several Nobel laureates, who promised to publish their work only in journals that complied with their demand. But almost none did.
That is when Dr. Varmus and his colleagues became convinced that they needed to raise money to start their own publication. After being rejected by several traditional science research foundations, the scientists found a sympathetic ear at the Silicon Valley foundation whose benefactor, Dr. Gordon E. Moore, was the co-founder of Intel Corporation.
"Scientists are a conservative bunch," said Dr. Edward Penhoet, the foundation's senior director for science. "In the short term they'll still be publishing in Cell and other places. But in the long term, I think this has the potential to dramatically facilitate science."
I'm sure that in soviet russia, science owns you. What a frickin' surprise.
Merkac Dot : 48210
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Cool, but useless.
What gets in? If it is public I mean, then couldn't anybody submit and be published?
Way back in the 19th century, protestant Englishman and Americans celebrated the new religion of amorality. This belief constituted a release from moral stricture for the then ruling class. Well this class rules today, and so does their moral law that they established.
Look, I don't know how to tell you this, but corporate america owns science, and has owned science for over a century. I think you should
consider what this means.
Many authors of scientific papers, at least in Physics, Math, and CS are making preprints available for free on arXiv.org. This is a great site, and as a fellow scientist, I for one would like to see more authors do this and make their knowledge accessible to those who don't want to feed greedy journal publishers.
-- Samir Gupta, Ph. D. Head, New Technology Research Group, Nintendo Co. Ltd., Kyoto, Japan.
please don't listen to slashdot servers, they are wrong: i was first.
additionally, i am not stupid enough to waste moderation points on a soviet russia comment, and therefor deserve your awe and lust more than the uncreative biped above.
It's not like the NY Times servers are going to be slashdotted any time soon...
If I am not mistaken, the financier George Soros has also made noticeable contributions towards the liberalisation of science journals. Even though some of his other business "ventures" are more ruthless, I am glad to see that he realizes the importance of free information and the societal benefits that it will provide.
Newton put it best. "If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of Giants"
All science, and technology is built on prior theories, experimentation and research. Putting more information out there is the best to speed our understanding of the world. As well bring new technologies into being.
IANALBIPOOGL (I am not a Lawyer, but I play one on GrokLaw.)
A strange but perhaps helpful analogy might be the railroads. The paths the railways followed were those travelled by those who came before the railways but the capital investment necessary to lay the track and get the trains rolling required huge outlays of private capital. To compensate the capital investment much land and resources was given to the railways. Now with the new technologies the proprietory moguls are trying to make a case that knowledge can't be dissiminated without similar out lays of capital to that necessary to underwrite the railways. And that the outlay entitles them to ownership of the goods and services that use the infrastructure and technology. This is akin to the railways being given ownership of all the goods and services the railway brought to developing nations. This amounts to the old adage of putting the cart before the horse. For knowledge and research to thrive it must have free reign and if the new technology is to carry the fruit of new research then it must be underwritten by government or non-proprietory means.
"Academicians are more likely to share each other's toothbrush than each other's nomenclature."
Cohen
shut up! shut up! shut up!
Some science is patented, some science is copyrighted, some science is just plain hidden, and some science is common sense. The only way all science will ever be completely free/open is if we are all borg'ified.
Sex - Find It
i like the idea of PLoS but corporate america does own science...er..sorta
Alcohol and Calculus don't mix. Don't drink and derive.
Hopefully, this will lead to development and testing of theories to be free. Prototypes and exploratory digs to be free. Hopefully, the secrets to long-term, manned space exploration can be found in a cooperative funded only by the raw materials, hard work and brainpower of its members. In essence, the scientific and discoverative process needs to break the binds that tie it, namely, money and "military applications". "...and on some days it just rains..." -Principia Disordia
This is exactly the kind of stuff being done today up at Dartmouth College. The fMRI Data Center is home to a public data warehouse of MRI scans. Publishing research involves more than just glossy pictures and a paper, the actual data should be shared to allow others to repeat the experiment.
The community has not yet decided if this is a good idea but they will come around.
The New York Times has an article [Sorry, tomorrow's article, no Google link yet]
I wish I could read it, but I've just been arrested for murdering Cowboy Neal tomorrow.
This movement is not new. It is in fact, the original way that science came to be. It only stopped when secrecy became involved.
When science was used to devolope weapons, it stopped being pure and became a new form of global currancy.
Corporations picked up on this later and started restircting information sharing by use of patents and such.
These have been the norm for so long, that a lot of the scientific growth we have made in the last centruy belongs to one entity or another. NOW we are saying that it needs to be shared... interesting.
We are all veterans of the latest battlefield, intellectual property. How many of us have had great ideas that we can't share with anyone else because we'll loose our jobs, or even worse, get sued for all we are worth because we violated our hiring contracts?
Is it too late to return to the way that worked? This is something to think about.
"Logic merely enables one to be wrong with authority." - Dr. Who
Invoicing, Time Tracking, Reporting
These people are asking authors to pay $1500 per paper to cover the editorial costs. This is a Bad Idea.
First, this will inevitably have a negative effect on the submission of papers; I certainly wouldn't have submitted my first paper (now published) while I was still an undergraduate student if I had to pay for it.
Second, this raises a conflict of interest. If a journal's costs are being met by its authors, there will be a pressure to keep those authors happy -- which means publishing their papers. The current situation, where a journal's costs are met by its subscribers is the opposite -- the journals are under pressure to keep the quality as high as possible.
Finally, remember that quite a few papers are available online already. This varies from field to field, of course, but most mathematicians I know have all of their papers from the past decade online.
Tarsnap: Online backups for the truly paranoid
I keep abreast of current science using http://xxx.lanl.gov
Articles show up in the ePrint archive often 6 months before they shows up in the journals.
Bah!
Don't anthropomorphize information, it doesn't like it!!
There's a rarely-explored connection between science and freedom AFAIK.
IANAL, but I still feel that the automatic assumption that these two things will always get better rests on the broad but not infinite shoulders of Aristotle, the Founding Fathers (regardless of where you live), and Ayn Rand-like characters.
IIRC from my studies, during the 'Dark Ages', the accumulated knowledge of centuries vanished, and these instants nearly coincided with repression of freedom (either from church or state).
PMFJI, but there is much evidence that the American era is coming to an end, and with it may come darker ages than those ever before known. (specifally, I cite the FDA, for crushing the advance of pharmacudical/medical science, as well as the departments of education, for caving to the mysics in their insistance that creationism be taught in public schools; and the gov't in general for any and all attempts to regulate, censor, or tax the Internet.)
This may sound TLTBT, but I say enjoy the freedom you have while you still have it. Our time time may be running out.
TXS.
that iosmart owns science!! or maybe price chopper wristbands and latex gloves owns science. who knows?
My current Science Patent is pending at the US Patent office. I've outlined the "Technique of researching, evaluating and publishing" Where in a participant (which I call Scientist) will seek to find a problem, then think about or find a solution. This patent also covers the cases where there is an a priori solution, and the Scientist attempts to find a problem
If you wish to license this technology, please contact me.
What I would like to see developed is Google Research, a search engine of papers only. Yes, your milage would vary as some would, and some would not have had peer review. But it would still be a very useful research tool.
Note that the PLoS plans to start with two journals which focus on biology and medicine. These are the fields where basic research can yield megabucks in the relatively short term. In my own field (astronomy), there's not a cent to be made by anyone; hence, I doubt we'll see a PLoS journal of astronomy or astrophysics anytime soon.
Note also that if researchers didn't care about getting money from industry, they wouldn't be chary of publishing their results for all to see. The real problems occur when scientists need big money to set up big labs employing many people to develop new medicines (or do research which has obvious applications to new medicines) which can treat "wealthy" diseases: diseases which affect many people in wealthy countries. I don't see a way around this: investment by big pharmaceutical companies WILL speed the pace of such research (that's good), but will also lead to secrecy and higher drug prices for some time after the products first appear (that's bad).
Some problems are just plain complicated. This is one of them. I wish the PLoS the best of luck, but I don't give them much of a chance. As long as a few researchers are willing to work in secrecy, they can use the PLoS results plus their "secret" results and often beat the "public" researchers to the punch. It's not unlike the prisoner's dilemma.
Michael Richmond "This is the heart that broke my finger."
mwrsps@rit.edu http://stupendous.rit.edu
Of course this is all noble, well-intentioned and all that good stuff in principle...
But
This changes subtly capitalistic influences to a subtly politicized ones.
I don't care how accomplished these prominent scientists on the editorial boards are, they're not gods, and they'll have their own subconcious axes to grind. In journals like Science and Nature, at least the capitalistic incentive is dry and impersonal, unlike the motivation to maintain dogma.
I'm not so sure the monetary incentive is worse than the political one which would emerge here.
I'm glad there are a few who do not equate innovation with new ways to stick meters on that
which can be free. Or surrender to the notion
that anything which can be metered should be metered for the sake of the ideology of capitalism or maintaining an advantage over their
fellows.
"It sounds very sympathetic to say this should be available to the public," he said. "But this kind of material is only used by experts."
I have to disagree with this viewpoint. Just because the majority of people who want to get to this information are "experts" doesn't mean you shouldn't make it available to everyone. There are plenty of people (I am one of them) who have an interest in various scientific fields and like to read papers and yet who aren't studying for their PHDs. When are they going to start one of these journals for physics! (I guess there is Arxiv.)
Some people have said that lots of scientific work is copyrighted/patented, but that doesn't prevent free distribution. The whole _point_ of the patent process is to give the patentee a guaranteed limited monopoly so that they _will_ immediately publish their works, instead of hording them as secrets. Free distribution doesn't mean noone can make any money.
Really, this seems like the trend that is happening in many areas where distribution has hitherto been controlled by a small group of publishers, due to the high cost of publishing. The internet can change the way we distribute information without killing commerce!
At least Nature (the magazine) isn't passing their own version of the DMCA...
"When I was in school, I cheated on my metaphysics exam: I looked into the soul of the boy sitting next to me"
When I want a copy of Science, I take a short bike ride to my local public library. It's good excercise, and it saves me quite a bit of money.
Granted, this doesn't solve the problem with distribution in the Third-World, but I think that can be solved mainly through grants and generosity on Science's part. Third-World doctors are unlikely to subscribe due to the financial costs involved, so Science isn't going to be losing any potential paying customers anyways.
All your science are belong to us.
-Corporate Robber Barons
How ya like dat?
you too funny, big funny man!
you make microsoft joke in completely non-microsoft-related topic!
too much funny!
freedom wants to be information
It's like that old saying "Anyone can experience and learn astronomy, all you have to do is look up". Well, not really, but you get the idea. Now all you have to do is hit the plos journals. This is tremendous news to me. As it stands now, I have to go downtown to the university library in order to read the latest Science journals. That, or pay way to much for my favorates, especially certain technology related journals. If this all pans out, the progression of man can be shared and enjoyed by all, not just by those with access ('$') to the "closed sources".
In Soviet Russia, up shuts YOU!
Information wants to be free
Tell that to the NYTimes. Registration-required is not "free" imo, as they ask for personal information.
In Soviet Russia, required registers YOU!
heh hehheh
Ain't that the truth. Just think about the legions of people that still think our Earth to be 6,000 years old, or do not understand the fundamentals of evolution, or who still harbor belief in scietific impossibilities like ghosts, or blatant myths like efreets and virgins giving birth to supermen that can walk on water. The world is suffering from a severe lack of scientific education and frankly, any little bit helps.
In Soviet Russia, lust awes YOU!
For all practial purposes, we can regard information to be either zero or one in numbers. You either have it or you don't.
Apples and oranges, for all practical sake, should be counted for as many there are. ie. 10 apples in this basket. Same goes for CDs or books. Anything solid. But for information, you cannot know something twice. You may have two of the same CD, but the information should count as one.
Now lets add the internet to the picture. The internet has no hard copy. Information is either online or offline. Everyone has it, or no one has it. And ANYONE can publish anything for virutally no cost. Even what someone else wants to keep secret or restricted.
Hence all businesses that bank on the delivery or copying of data, should either find another job, or change their attitude to "selling hard copies" from "selling you the info".
Inevitably, there will be a shift of value towards the creators of information, and not the copies of information. Information alone, is either available or unavailable. But the creators are solid. The creators have restrictions on time. The creators can decide what they create. The creators can decide what to make public. And money may as well influence their decisions.
We, the individuals are the creators. The 21st century will be the century of the individual. No longer will people get filthy rich for selling other people's work. No longer will creators stay rich when they are no longer creative. No longer will the market govern innovation.
Finally, this century, innovation will govern the market. Simply because that is how we wish for things to be. And our wish is our next creation.
i am not stupid enough to waste moderation points on a soviet russia comment
In Soviet Russia, the stupid comments moderate you!
"If not all fruits are oranges, it stands to reason that not all oranges are fruits, either." Um, no... it exactly does not stand to reason.
The Mongrel Dogs Who Teach
microsoft took science for it's own use but....Acacia has a patent on a method for using science to do anything at all, so it's all worthless microsoft can't make any money off it
I think the point is that free/open science will benefit us all (even the journal publishers, because they too will benefit from quicker technological advances) more than the other kinds, and contribute towards us not becoming "borgified".
That man had a righteous do only rivalled by that of Einstein.
I've got the Feynman "Think Different" poster in my office. Every day is a tribute to his fab locks.
The science part was cool, too.
--
the strongest word is still the word "free"
I sent more or less this as a reply to the editorial board of the New York Times earlier today:
You had a feature describing the reality of scientific publishing today.
As a scientist I can unfortunatey inform you that it was nowhere near
the actual situation today.
This is the typical sequence of events for a scientific publication:
1) We do science. This is sort of a basic prerequisite for anything else
to happen. It is also usually funded directly by the public, or
indirectly funded by various foundations. This part - which by many is
seen as our core competency - is largely funded by public institutions.
2) We try to publish. Now, here is the problem: We try to publish in the
most 'prestigious' journals that we can. Why? Because the number of
papers that we publish - and the importance of the journals that we
publish in - is absolutely critical to our future careers. And our
carreers is rather important to things like money for food, clothes to
our children and so on. There is no certainty in the academic world
apart from the one that expounds that few papers = few citations = no
future. Of course, having a lot of papers in prestigious journals
guarantees nothing except a greater chance of being noticed.
3) So, our important paper has been sent away - in some cases with a $10
charge (or more) per page. This paper is immediately sent on to the editors. Who
are the editors? Why, our own colleagues. The very act of being an
editor for any publication is still regarded as being important. In no
case is either the author nor editor compensated for anything-
4) Now, after several rounds between us, the editor and the reviewers
(who, like the editor, are doing the work for free), the paper is
finallyu ready for publication. Observe that not only is the content
finalized, but the entire typographical layout has been perfected by the
very same authours that are being paid by the university (ie. either a
private grant or by the public) to do research, but are now spending a
month of their time making usre their manuscript is conforming to the
smallest detail to the publications' standards.
4.5) As a small addendum, the authors are requested to sign a form
agreeing to the publication actually publishing the paper in question.
The researchers, having little choice, sign it.
5) Finally, the paper is out. It appears, formated exactly as the
researchers did it, in the next 'issue'. The number of 'issues' is equal
to the number of research libraries prepared to pay $5000 or more for
four issues of maybe four or five of these papers a year.
These publications pay nothing for the content (the researchers
sometimes evan pay cash to get content into them), editing (it is done
for free by otherresearchers) or typesetting (as it is done by the
researchers themselves). The total work for these publishers is
maximally in one half-time secretarial position to connect papers with
appropriate editors and reviewers. Yet they charge $5000 per year (or
more - sometimes much more) for four issues - or more than $10 per page -
for the very same results that the univerities, and, in the end, the
public, has paid for being conducted in teh first place.
6) So, even with this gouging, our researcher and her doctoral students
have at least a good publictaion to their name? Well, no. It turns out
that the to publish the rsults, the publishing company actually owns the
text of the paper. The doctoral students can not use the text they have
written as part of their theses. The people that have done the research
- and that want only to spread the results to their colleagues - do no
longer own their own text. Only with permission - and with a great deal
of money - may they actually use their own text in other situations,
like on the web or in their onwn theses.
The end result is that the authors do all the preparatorial work, using the publics' money; the editors and reviewers does their work using the publics money, and som printer somewhere prints a few hundred copies of the publication for a standard (low) fee. Meanwhile the company owning the publication retains the ownership of the papers and $5000 minus the printing cost of one (out of a few hundred (at the max)) printed copies of the journal.
Hell yes, I'd be delighted with being in a business with a 20000% profit margin...
Trust the Computer. The Computer is your friend.
CORPORATIONS OWN SCIENCE. duh! This is quite a moot point. Science = New Religion, and who are the stewards priests deacons etc of our new religion? Doctors, Engineers and (drumroll) Business Men! Information does not want anyway, and corporations don't want it to be free, so give it up already. Man, this lameness filter crap is realling annoying. first I've got to wait twenty seconds, then I can't use caps. When did slashdot become fascist? Why, I remember when it didn't even have banner ads! blah blah blah.
particularly where the bio genetics corporations are concerned. For instance, foods already 70 percent of processed foods in the US contain genetically altered material.....most of which is patented. What's to stop some company from patenting human gene structures and so forth? I really think somewhere humans have already been cloned ....will natural people, animals, and food be bioengineered to the detriment of thier natural counterparts or out of existence altogether? I believe that bio science will be the most talked about science now and well into the future. Talking about whether people are going to want to share this technology with each other is just the tip of the iceberg..... playing God with bio science may be something we shouldn't be tampering with in the first place. I don't claim to be too knowledgeable in this area, but instinct tells me that this kind of science is too dangerous to igniore. I found a transcript from a radio show that discusses the possible implications...take a look:
http://www.radioproject.org/transcripts/9846.html
"You helped our nation celebrate its bicentennial in 17 -- 1976." --George W. Bush, to Queen Elizabeth, Wash
Sounds great. Free and open science jornals, but the content seems non-existant so far..
Eat at Joe's.
The other one means Too Ludicrous To Be True.
Free and unrestricted access is definitely music to the ears! But is it possible in the current era? Can an institution survive without revenue generation? Unless, of course, if it has a source which keeps doling out those million dollar grants!
Um you guys didn't note at the bottom of their discussion of their journals that publication is not free- instead like other journals they charge you page fees to get your work printed! This is like all other journals where a lot of the grant money goes to publication (Astrophysical Journal charges $150 per page for the print edition and $120 per page for the electronic edition). This is why we should do away with journals and expand arxiv (xxx.lanl.gov)!
I think (and hope) that this will continue to take off and become more and more complete.
is that limited information access is not the biggest problem for researchers. I can get access to any paper I want for little or no cost. I have the opposite problem - I can't keep up with all the material being published in my relatively narrow field.
It's gotten so bad that unless I am familiar with the author(s), I often pass on a paper just based on the title. If the title looks promising, I scan the abstract. If the abstract looks promising, I add the paper to my "to read" list, hoping I'll have time to get to it.
Let's face it, with more people than ever actively engaged in research, the biggest threat to important scientific ideas is not the control of publishers or the oppression of government/religion/CowboyNeal, it's the threat of being lost in the crowd.
I agree. That's why science is diying
This, and the so-called ``peer review'', which is neither, but editorial censorship, and that has never been shown to be a good method of quality assurance (quite the opposite, the last frauds have shown!) but does allow the existance of cliques, black lists, and the censoring of most revolutionary science.
I'm afraid it's the the paradigm of science itself that is obsolete; science-as-we-know-it has survived its usefulness.
Time to go for Version 2.0
``L'imagination au povoir.''
Peer review---real peer review---means no editors (editors are not you peers) and no consoring, that is, publish first, and what you publish is reviewed by you peer. That's science.
>If it is public I mean, then couldn't anybody submit and be published?Well, yes, that's true science. Publish, be reviewed, get grilled by your peers. Just like Free Software.
But no, this proposal is not that. It's just the same ol same ol, but just make sure that the `papers' are available for free (after six months!). This proposal is not good enough; and it won't save science.
``L'imagination au povoir.''
You are right. The NewDarkAgesâ are upon us, while most people are blissfully ignorant. We stand a little chance to prevent this, and Free Software et al. are some of the forces that oppose this darkness. But we are but few, and we probably lack the power to win.
Science, real free science, is over, I'm afraid, an thie PLoS is just too little too late.
``L'imagination au povoir.''
What you mean is research not science. Science is free and public.
``L'imagination au povoir.''
OH lolllo lol LOLLY LOOLY.
Despite the media propoganda that scientists are 'rational and analytical', the fact of the matter is that much of scientific discourse is based on animosity/debate, personal motivations, and mostly 'un-scientific' behavior. The thing is, however, that scientists have got these protocols established which allow for improvement, peer review, and communications.
Now then, most scientists are not exactly in science for the money, so I'm skeptical about the reward system argument. Moreover, I agree that 'stealing' may not be the correct term to use. Therefore, I am going to go out on a limb here, and say that it may be the case that scientists themselves may not completely understand the reward system.
Now, I've known a lot of scientists in my time, and I'd have to say that most of them:
1) Specialize in a certain field, and have a great grasp of that field;
2) Don't have a great concept of money (unless they are specializing in that field, although that still doesn't mean that they have alot of money).
3) Have general human interests and desires, just like everyone else (health, security, friendships, feeling of importance, etc).
4) Are interested in receiving credit for work they've done.
5) They wind up receiving credit for their work, but rewards go to other groups, because of the structure of modern science.
Anyhow, I'm digressing. Your question: Without having someone to start, how do you develop your own theories?
Yeah... That question has sort of been asked, and answered, by a guy named Thomas Kuhn. He writes to the affect that generally one has to start with someone else's theories. The exceptions which proove the rule are what he calls 'Anamoly of Oservation' (I think that's the term he uses). Anyhow, the answer to your question, as I understand it, is that you develop your own theories by observing something which nobody else has ever observed before, and stating a theory about it. This is a rather difficult proposition generally, but it does happen. Examples include:
measurement of the speed of light (constant! no more Ether!)
radioactive isotopes (they glow! different weights!)
electromagnetic spectrum (waves in the air!)
nucleic acid alpha/beta structures (stores information! genetics!)
penicillin production (germs! small things! drugs!)
columbus crosses the atlantic (america! real estate for the taking!)
These examples illustrate general 'ah-ha' experiences and fundamental observations which may very well defy the 'reward system' and the concept of stealing (well, maybe columbus and folks stole america, but that's another story).
I'm rambling. Signing off.
Ok, that doesn't even make sense. Get back on your dead horse and go away, schmuck.
When I want a copy of Science, I take a short bike ride to my local public library.
This has nothing to do with a copy of Science. Science is borderline popular magazine... it has a huge distribution including public libraries.
What this has to do with is the 100s of small distribution journals that will *never* be found in your public library. And if they are found in your college/university library where you are faculty you are lucky. Usually you have to pay yourself for the subscriptions you want.
ssss hh hh uu uu tttttt uu uu pppp
ss hh hh uu uu tt uu uu pp pp
ssss hhhhhh uu uu tt uu uu pppp
ss hh hh uu uu tt uu uu pp
ssss hh hh uu tt uu pp
i can't believe that so many people decided to post
the same corny, lame, and hackneyed dead joke. go
away you morons.
Publish your stuff on the web for everybody to see, download and critique. Science belongs to the public who pays for it all, not just a bunch of elitist a-holes competing for grant money. If your stuff any good, someone will notice. If it's a bunch of boring and inconsequential crap (like most of the stuff published in peer-reviewed journals), nobody will give a hoot. Be like the Wright brothers and do your own science. You don't need the approval of the insufferable pompous know-it-alls in the scientific community. Paul Feyarabend said it best:
"And a more detailed analysis of successful moves in the game of science ('successful' from the point of view of the scientists themselves) shows indeed that there is a wide range of freedom that demands a multiplicity of ideas and permits the application of democratic procedures (ballot-discussion-vote) but that is actually closed by power politics and propaganda. This is where the fairy-tale of a special method assumes its decisive function. It conceals the freedom of decision which creative scientists and the general public have even inside the most rigid and the most advanced parts of science by a recitation of 'objective' criteria and it thus protects the big-shots (Nobel Prize winners; heads of laboratories, of organizations such as the AMA, of special schools; 'educators'; etc.) from the masses (laymen; experts in non-scientific fields; experts in other fields of science): only those citizens count who were subjected to the pressures of scientific institutions (they have undergone a long process of education), who succumbed to these pressures (they have passed their examinations), and who are now firmly convinced of the truth of the fairy-tale. This is how scientists have deceived themselves and everyone else about their business, but without any real disadvantage: they have more money, more authority, more sex appeal than they deserve, and the most stupid procedures and the most laughable results in their domain are surrounded with an aura of excellence. It is time to cut them down in size, and to give them a more modest position in society."
SCIENCE 0wNZ YOU!
Peer review---real peer review---means no editors (editors are not you peers) and no consoring, that is, publish first, and what you publish is reviewed by you peer. That's science.
Sorry to see that your post was modded down to 'troll' by some clueless Slashdot moderator. I absolutely agree with you. Here's what the late science critic Paul Feyarabend had to say on the matter:
"And a more detailed analysis of successful moves in the game of science ('successful' from the point of view of the scientists themselves) shows indeed that there is a wide range of freedom that demands a multiplicity of ideas and permits the application of democratic procedures (ballot-discussion-vote) but that is actually closed by power politics and propaganda. This is where the fairy-tale of a special method assumes its decisive function. It conceals the freedom of decision which creative scientists and the general public have even inside the most rigid and the most advanced parts of science by a recitation of 'objective' criteria and it thus protects the big-shots (Nobel Prize winners; heads of laboratories, of organizations such as the AMA, of special schools; 'educators'; etc.) from the masses (laymen; experts in non-scientific fields; experts in other fields of science): only those citizens count who were subjected to the pressures of scientific institutions (they have undergone a long process of education), who succumbed to these pressures (they have passed their examinations), and who are now firmly convinced of the truth of the fairy-tale. This is how scientists have deceived themselves and everyone else about their business, but without any real disadvantage: they have more money, more authority, more sex appeal than they deserve, and the most stupid procedures and the most laughable results in their domain are surrounded with an aura of excellence. It is time to cut them down in size, and to give them a more modest position in society."
From "Against Method"
I think I'd want Ramanujan over Newton.
I thought he worked at a university with Thomas Hardy, anyway?
--grendel drago
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
And for a reasonable $120 a year, anyone can have access to Science as well.
P.S. In case you were still wondering about the topic question ("Who Owns Science?"), it's property of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
...advanced arguments that outlined many of the basic ideas that distinguish modern science including the idea that investigations need to cooperative, that many research questions will require social backing and multiple generations of endeavour in order to succeed. The earliest scientific bodies were organized around the baconian model.
Key to these ideas was the view that science advances through the open commnuication of data and ideas. Once published, stealing "their hardwork" is an absurd idea. Without the review of others, their "hard work" might have been little more than mistakes and nonsense. Besides which, few journals pay authors much. The "carrot" a journal offers is usually exposure - fame not wealth.
------ The only greater hazard to your liberty than n politicians is n+1 politicians.
Feyerabend quote is amazing! Yes, that's exactly how Scienceâ works! Thanks for the ref!
Time to read Feyerabend again. I've just read some chapters from him for an epistemology course, long ago; always liked his ideas, but never had time to read more. Time, time. Ars longa vita brevis, &c. :-/
``L'imagination au povoir.''
Giants stand on YOU!
Someday soon:
I'm sorry sir, you can't take your newborn child home. His genetic sequence has been copyrighted by Monsanto, you'll have to pay the licensing fee.
Wow, I didn't know they changed names (to a more PC system, or to bypass nanny-ware, I guess) to arXiv. I was going to point you to the XXX site on the net where geeks actually contribute the most to the action. But apparently these sites are one and the same.
make world, not war
Creationism doesn't attempt to refute Darwinism. It attempts to refute EVOLUTION.
Darwinism is a theory. EVOLUTION IS A FACT.
Dariwnism != Evolution
So, nice straw man, pinhead.
+5, Funny.
What? What? What? Are you telling me slashdot isn't the home of the dead horse.
Maybe we should ask the goatse guy, the frist prosters, the Natalie Portman clones, the MDMA poster, the all-your-base-are-belong-us, hot gritz guy etc.
Yep. I have a dead horse I wish to beat, are you trying to tell me I have the wrong place?
Empirical evidence suggests otherwise.
See another AC's warning.
Yeap. It sure does suxor. What, you are #20 or something. Come back when you are ready to play with the big boys.
TX, and HAND.
"This has very important implications for the fundamental principle that Science must transcend all economic, national and other barriers"
Ah... Just like how the farmer plants the crops, but everybody reap the rewards, right? Yes, you to can join the popular Scientific Communism movement where somebody else can enjoy the fruits of your labor despite their or lack of contributions, use and motivations.
This is another one of those utopian ideals that just don't work as long as their are people around. Scientific communism is just like social communism-- It's a nice thought, but it all goes wrong in the end.
In Soviet Russia, the Beowolf Cluster imagines YOU.... Or something like that.
You need a FREE iPod Nano
Saying that there are ghosts is meaningless unless you provide a way to disprove your theory. "I propose that x. We can check x by doing y."
If a theory can't be disproven, it's as useless as weapons inspections in Iraq. (No, really, check the analogy. If we find weapons, Saddam is evil. If we don't, he's hiding them, and so Saddam is evil. It's a meaningless exercise.)
This is the problem with parapsychology/ESP people. They put out theories that can't be disproven. I'm sure legit experimentation would be trivial to do if someone would formally define what they're looking for. Of course, then they'd have to deal with getting a null result back...
--grendel drago
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
I signed the Open Letter long ago, not because I agreed with every point, but because it was good to see something stir up some noise. I also licensed my thesis under the PLoS license, not because I think it has much legal value (it confuses "public domain" with RMS' concept of copyleft), but because I think that if anybody wants to copy that thesis, it can only help me, and besides the fuzz you created was great! As it turns out, all of those of my childhood friends who have become scientists have independently signed the Open Letter! :-)
One of my main beefs with the PLoS is the insistence of a centralized archive. True, it may be easier to build something good on the top of for example the existing Arxiv.org (I'm an astrophysicist), but decentralization is one of the fundamental principles of the web. It is wise to learn as much as possible from these architectural principles, and make use of them as fast as possible.
I have for long wanted to write an article with the many thoughts I have in my head, but time has not allowed me to. The future of scientific publishing is perhaps the topic that I would most like to work with.
I noted in the Nature debate (which I submitted a link to some time ago), that some of the non-profit publishers wouldn't let go of their published articles because they couldn't ensure the integrity of the articles. This has a rather obvious technical solution to most people here on Slashdot, in the form of signatures. Now that XML Signature is a W3C Recommendation, I think it is just a matter of implementing it, the problem is really solved.
As for finance (now comes the excuse for posting in this thread), it is a problem that needs addressing for the whole Internet community. Many different modes should be available, for example, a nice, printed journal set by a professional typographer will not seize to be attractive although the article is available on the web. Some may well find a steady income there. Also, micropayments is something that is worth checking out.
I would personally like to work on those solutions, so if anybody is hiring... :-)
Employee of Inrupt, Project Release Manager and Community Manager for Solid
It seems to me that Michael Eisen and others setting up the PLOS initiative, are trying to appease the big publishing companies (Springer, Elsevier) by appearing not to threaten their cartel on the scientific discourse. The truth is that all scientific journals are dinosaurs from the age of paper. There is simply no reason why a larger version of the arxiv, with electronic peer-review (Slashdot as a model?), would not be a workable substitute for every scientific journal. If the PLOS organisers were to be true to their principles of open science, they would be pushing for an end to the journal system altogether. Physicists are far ahead of the bioscientists in this respect.
When you did nothing but agree with him.
He used a quote to illustrate a point.
Obviously Plato was influenced by someone, he had parents or the state at the very least. Anyone that couldn't make that logical leap probably wouldn't have been able to determine it was an apropos comment.
He had a valid point that you did nothing to discredit, and everything to support, and showed your ass in the process.
Not to mention Socrates was a character in Plato's writing. There was a lawyer by the name close to that time, but didn't teach, and didn't drink hemloc in prison.
Sarcasm is an attempt at humour. Therefore it stands to reason that all attempts at humour are sarcasm.
er, no. Thank you for playing.
But if you want to subscribe, it'll set you back up to $159 a year.
And in America if you want to eat, it'll set you back about that much a month.
Honestly people, there is no justification on plunking down a little expense if it is your LIVELYHOOD for goodness sake. After all, this is like saying that textbooks that contain known science should be handed out for free.
Everything costs money to get done if someone is manning the helm. $159 US a year is not bad for a group of people who mull over the interesting in a field and report on it.
After all I know a lot of scientists with $159 calculators.
- Be in a very exact format, or they are rejected. The author of the paper does this formatting (read scientist, not an editor), the editor just rejects them.
- Be "peer reviewed." This is key, this is what keeps the better journals really honest and true, with good science. Who reviews them? Other scientists, for free. The SUBMITTING author usually recommends at least 3 people in his specific field, then the paper gets sent out to 3 to 5 scientists who review it for free for the Journal to be considered someday to be a "editor" or get editorial credit. What's this cost the journal? Shipping? They don't even make copies, the submitting author is required to provide all the copies.
Sorry, but where are the "editorial costs?" You mean those 1 page, un-reviewed, opinion pages they sometimes stick in the front after the index? Or the trouble of having to create the index page?I'd believe publication costs (like printing and such), but editorial? Come on.
The system isn't totally broken, but it could be improved. The key is the peer review process, not the editorial parts. Good science passes peer review. Bad science is published only when peer review is not present or poor.
There is the startup problem of attracting the best scientists to publish your "new" way. The best want to publish in the the best journals. If you have no track record, then it is hard to get the chain going.
A large fraction of the scientific journals are backed by a quality professional society. For example, Science magazine is sponsored by the American Association for Advancement of Science, annual meeting in Denver 2/03. If the AAAS would buy into this new on-line journal, then it would fly.
argue that scientific literature cannot be privately controlled or owned by the publishers of scientific journals, and must instead be available in public archives freely accessible by anyone and everyone.
Spock said it best...
"Since the information on Memory Alpha is freely available to everyone, no defensive systems were deemed necessary."
Hopefully we don't make the same mistake. The federation did not have an evil copyright industry to contend with.
Those who would give up liberty in exchange for security and DRM should switch to Microsoft Palladium!
I can't believe you're stupid enough to be trolled by it.
Lunch. Thank you Robert Heinlein. If it isn't worth paying for, it isn't worth anything. Or its exactly worth what you paid for. However, when my tax dollars paid for lunch, I don't think that my wanting to see the results is unreasonable. I think the government should hold the patent on all discoveries/inventions paid for with government dollars. That way, if a company wants exclusive rights to the product or discovery, they will fund their own research. Its a little naive, I know, and all the European and Japanese companies are taking handouts, but I don't believe those companies get the exclusive rights that we just seem to give away here.
This fits right in with the DOE online library that got axed due to pressure from the publishers of "journals".
And if I read one more NASA tech brief article where some moron is patenting a battery hooked up to a resistor that is now some new sensor/bootstrap circuit, I am going to vomit.
Don't even get me started on patents for single click whatevers. But at least the government didn't pay for them directly.
"I went on a diet, swore off drinking and heavy eating. And in fourteen days, I had lost exactly two weeks. Joe E. Lewis
original posters only moderate moderators
why NOW? why not all these years. must have been similar efforts, does anybody know? Good idea but a bit utioppian (*spelling).
Glowing balls of stuff (plasma?) have been known to pass through solid objects (you don't want them to do that to you!) and reflect (and emit) photons quite easily. You picked a bad definition there. Note also that many things (e.g. wood or glass) are opaque to some photons (e.g. visible light or UV) but transparent to others (e.g. radio or visible light).
My objection is not just the fact that you give Edison, as an individual, a low ranking. Frankly, I don't think he would much care what you thought of him. My primary objection is that, with that same mindset, you reject the importance of the individual, the importance of the entrepreneur/innovator, and the importance of our capitalistic system. If you want to argue that Edison contributed little directly to science in the way of theory, then fine you might have an argument there, but please do not confuse that with what he, and those like him, have done.
My points:
What you're saying here is so wrong, it's just hard to see where to start.
:
On only one, precise point, you're right : the religious attitude of the public towards science is absurd and even perverse. And so is the behaviour of those few scientists who exploit this situation to increase their importance.
I'll oppose to all the rest.
You say : There is nothing more obscure and inscrutinizable than science. Scientists make it a point to hide everything they do behind a impregnable wall of jargon and unnecessary mathematical obfuscation.
The point here is in 'unnecessary'. If it was unnecessary, everyone would prefer to speak in plain English, and the ones who wouldn't would look ridiculous. But unfortunately, that's impossible. By using plain English, one can sometimes obtain some qualitative results, and that's a good exercise often proposed to students in physics. But one can't obtain quantitative results. Let's take an example : quantum physics.
In quantum physics, as you might have heard talking about, it is possible for a particle to be in such a state that if you measure its position, the result is probabilistic, i.e., it is not determined before you actually perform the measurement. Now, a discussion in plain English about that is possible; it will indeed tell you that the result of the measure is probabilistic. That's not so bad. But you'll never be able to compute the actual probabilities if you use only English. How can I be sure of this ? Because I know what this computation amounts to, and there's no english word for that.
So, you'll tell me, if initially men didn't speek that horrible jargon but merely English, how have they been able, in the end, to make this computation ? The answer, of course, is that they have defined new words from existing ones. Of course one has not jumped directly from English to noncommutative geometry (the maths behind quantum physics). Each physics theory has required the introduction of some new math concepts. You'll notice that 1) the first pre-physic theories were expressed in ordinary speech and that 2) maths begin with english, then defining new words (like addition) from english words, and at each step defining new 'abstract' concepts from existing concepts. If you're interrested in seeing maths rewritten 'from scratch' like this, just take a good book on Set Theory (the beginning of a university math teaching in many countries).
Truth is, if a scientist claims to have an understanding of a natural phenomenon but is unable to explain it in everyday terms that laypeople can understand, it is a sure bet that he or she has no clue as to the nature of the phenomenon in question.
You're missing one point : Science does not pretend to tell the nature of things. This is the purpose of philosophy. Science is about the properties of thing. To know the properties is already not that bad, and is all what technology requires. It is also enough to challenge scientists. I agree that knowing the deep nature of things would be even much, much better, but might very well be beyond the reach of science. To discuss whether it is, is already philosophy. That's not my purpose here.
It is the elitism and censorship afforded by peer review (a form of intellectual incest) that gives a free rein to world-famous physicists and computer scientists [...] to write on subjects like time travel, multiple universes, warped spacetime [...]
Here you're mixing 3 different things in one statement
1) Peer review
2) Apparently strange physical theories
3) Existence of a few, 'world-famous' scientist, abusing the public's admiration
I won't deny point 3). But I'd like to say that people like Hawkins are not very estimated by their colleagues. Not only aren't they very productive scientists (Hawkins' theory has been proved false by experiments), but they contribute to make the public's ideas about science even weirder.
Now for point 1). Do you really think that Hawkins ' books have been reviewed ? Of course, you'll always find a professor to tell you what you want to. So I guess there are some profs wo have celebrated Hawkins' work. But that's not peer review ! That's lack of it ! Now I admit that in physics they have a problem : they aren't enough careful in peer reviews. But that does not mean that peer review is intrisically bad. In maths, where peer reviews are extremely strict (if a journal let an error pass, its reputation would be wrecked, and nobody would publish in it anymore. Remember that peer review is the only reason not to totally dump journals in favor of the web), we don't have any problem of that kind. So, you're in fact pleading for more peer reviews ! Unless you declare that reviews must be public. So instead of choosing reviewers among the best specialists of the subject, one will ask Mr Smith to do the job. But Mr Smith does not necessarily understand what it's about, because it's not in plain English. And I've already shown that the scientific jargon can't be dumped; one can only hope to find shortcuts in it, and that's one of the main purposes of theoretical science.
Now for point 2). You don't seem to believe in the predictions of theoretical physics. You're not asked to. But that does not allow you to declare that they're fake. Take the curvature of space-time. Looks incredible ? It's observed by telescopes, like when the same star (as proved by spectroscopy) is seen at different (yet nearby) positions in the sky. And it's already taken in account for the Global Positionning System, which wouldn't be as accurate as it is with only newtonian mechanics. To believe that spacetime is flat is like to believe that the earth is flat. It's obscurantism.
Now I've said above that "to find shortcuts in science is one of the main purposes of theoretical science." That is, sometimes you find a way of telling in two equations what took 15 equations before. That's very attractive, because nobody loves jargon. But now it can happen that the newer theory makes a prediction apparently weird, like, say, that the physical world has got 11 dimensions, and that our apparent physical world is only a membrane in it. Why not ? If it can make the theory neater, why not ? If we had always followed our primeval intuition, we would still be applying those horrible newtonian formulas !
If you think that your scientific knowledge is so arcane and so special and complicated that it could never be explained to lay people, I am afraid that you are nothing but an elitist charlatan and/or a crackpot.
Like any mathematician, everything I write is proved and verified. (I'm only a student as for now, so I haven't written much). So I'm not a charlatan. Charlatany would be to write something wrong, and to pretend it's true.
The only question about a mathematician's work is not about it's truth - anyway it's true. It's about it's interest. When maths pretend to be their own goal, the question may be raised, whether they may. That would have been a 'level 1' contestation of maths.
War doesn't prove who's right, just who's left.
This has very important implications for the fundamental principle that Science must transcend all economic, national and other barriers.
;)
there's my favorite word again!
measurement of the speed of light (constant! no more Ether!)
nnooppeee... it's not a constant...
measurement of the speed of light (constant! no more Ether!) But you have to know about Maxwell's laws (prediction of electromagnetic wave speed), the fact that light's a wave (Newton's optics amoung otheres) ....
radioactive isotopes (they glow! different weights!) Atoms exist (not continuous matter), they contain subatomic particles ...
electromagnetic spectrum (waves in the air!) Maxwell again, Newton again, the existance of radio waves, the properties of waves ...
nucleic acid alpha/beta structures (stores information! genetics!) (I'm not sure what you mean by alpha/beta structures, but :) There exists an acid precipitable chemical compound found in the nucleus, genetic inheretance is particle, these are the same, the nucleic acids are linear polymers ...
penicillin production (germs! small things! drugs!) Germs exist, they are the cause of disease, they are living and can be killed ...
columbus crosses the atlantic (america! real estate for the taking!) (How is this a scientific discovery?) The sextant, the concept of a spherical world (Columbus didn't make it up), astronomical navigation ...
PLoS is one of the leading initiatives for open access to science. For the other major program, see the Budapest Open Access Initiative and its FAQ. PLoS supports BOAI and vice versa.
For breaking news on these issues see the FOS News blog. (FOS stands for Free Online Scholarship.)
Peter
I won't deny that you have some valid points. There is a question regarding literature, however, which begs being answered. The issue at hand, it seems to me, is to what extent does there need to be a 'lack of literature' on a subject before somebody somebody's published theory is considered 'new'. Please note that each of my examples demonstrates a concept which some people describe as 'History is written by the victors'.
...
...
:) There exists an acid precipitable chemical compound found in the nucleus, genetic inheretance is particle, these are the same, the nucleic acids are linear polymers ...
...
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measurement of the speed of light (constant! no more Ether!) But you have to know about Maxwell's laws (prediction of electromagnetic wave speed), the fact that light's a wave (Newton's optics amoung others)
I see your point. I would suggest considering aetheric interpretations and aetheric mathematics regarding Maxwell's laws versus post-Michelson-Morley aethric wind experiment interpretations and mathematics. Um, that is, the mathematics were rewritten based on this observation of a new phenomena. The prior mathematics did not correctly describe nature, so aetheric interpretations no longer exist. Yes, you have to know about Maxwell's laws, but I would turn the argument around, and suggest that Maxwell was part of the group who measured the speed of light as constant, rather than being part of the group who were measuring Aetheric values (who subsuquently got written out of history).
radioactive isotopes (they glow! different weights!) Atoms exist (not continuous matter), they contain subatomic particles
If I was feeling billigerant, I could draw this topic out into a tedious and pedantic argument, which nobody would like. I'm going to conceed this point, however.
electromagnetic spectrum (waves in the air!) Maxwell again, Newton again, the existance of radio waves, the properties of waves
OK, what about these people? Did they not publish these laws and define the existance of radio waves and properties of waves? Where is the supporting literature prior to them, regarding these phenomena? I think they proposed new theories, based on observations which people had never observed before. Perhaps part of observation is recording your particular viewpoint. nucleic acid alpha/beta structures (stores information! genetics!) (I'm not sure what you mean by alpha/beta structures, but
Look it up. DNA has primary, secondary, and tertiary structures, based on folding patterns (commonly called alpha/beta structures; specifically 'alpha helix' and 'beta sheet'. I'm not entirely sure that DNA is a linear polymer. Each of these are factors based on the new theory of genetics proposed by Watson-Crick, which were most definately not in the literature prior to them. It's what they got the Nobel Prize for.
penicillin production (germs! small things! drugs!) Germs exist, they are the cause of disease, they are living and can be killed
I'm not all that sure that folks believe that germs existed prior to Pasteur and his penicillin experiments. I mean, penicillin is sort of what started the whole 'germ theory' concept. Before the mid 1800s, humans were a pretty sickly and unhygenic lot. Frankly, history just doesn't seem to support the concept that biology and medicine were practiced with the concept of germ theory prior to penicillin. Also, part of germ theory, it may be argued, is that germs are different than viruses. Nonetheless, none of it was in the literature.
columbus crosses the atlantic (america! real estate for the taking!) (How is this a scientific discovery?) The sextant, the concept of a spherical world (Columbus didn't make it up), astronomical navigation
Cartography and geology, yo! That's way scientific. I dunno, the discovery of an entirely new continent, which wasn't in the literature before, seems like a good candidate to be considered a scientific revolution.
Slashdot as a model?
I'm not sure if you're kidding here or not, but the usage of Scoop (see Kuro5hin) tends to get you a much more usable signal-to-noise ration. For something like debating journal articles, I don't think AC posting is really necessary. Heck, comment moderation (apart from friends/foes, perhaps) wouldn't be that useful. But the nested discussion model (as opposed to the god-awful flat model that phpBB has (can someone explain why the hell it's so popular?!)) has its applications.
--grendel drago
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
According to the patent :/