Slashdot Mirror
Science Journal Publishers Wary of Free Information
Billosaur writes "Nature.com is reporting that the Association of American Publishers (AAP), which includes the companies that publish scientific journals, is becoming concerned with the free-information movement. A meeting was arranged with PR professional Eric Dezenhall to discuss the problem. Dezenhall's firm has worked with the likes of ExxonMobil 'to criticize the environmental group Greenpeace', among other campaigns. The publishers are worried that the free exchange of scientific information may be bad for the bottom line, as it might cause the money from subscriptions to their journals to dry up. Among the recommendations: 'The consultant advised them to focus on simple messages, such as "Public access equals government censorship". He hinted that the publishers should attempt to equate traditional publishing models with peer review, and "paint a picture of what the world would look like without peer-reviewed articles.' The AAP is trying to counter messages from groups such as the Public Library of Science (PLoS), an open-access publisher and prominent advocate of free access to information, or the National Institutes of Health's (NIH's) PubMed Central."
Oh yes, the American way. Information that's vital for you: either pay for it, or die.
Now seriously, come on! those "scientific" papers, I didn't know they made MILLIONS a year out of subscriptions (that's what research costs, millions if not billions). Maybe I'm in the wrong business?
"Public access equals government censorship"
I've been parsing that for a few minutes and it doesn't make sense. How would open access equate to some sort of closed access?
Trolling is a art,
an example of a prestigious journal published by a for-profit company? My impression is that for-profit journals only exist for the purpose of giving second-tier researchers a place to publish garbage. (All the prestigious journals in my field are published by the non-profit IEEE.)
Toronto-area transit rider? Rate your ride.
There is already 'free exchange' of scientific information. The publishers already contribute to it. What they're really worried about is that people will publish in other media, especially where they don't have to pay (or not as much). They're just looking out for themselves. Publishers have to pay the bills and put their kids through college, too.
'Loose' is when your pants are three sizes too big. 'Lose' is when you misuse 'loose'.
Subscription-funded scientific journals will simply have to find alternatives to exclusivity of information.
A funded journal would still be the best way to get the relevant information all in one place; the problem with free information is that it can be difficult to sort through for specific information. Take all the information that is freely available, pick out the best of it, do some research of your own, and publish a work that goes above and beyond the free information.
That's what thousands of news organizations and non-science journals do every day.
120 characters for a sig? That's bloody useless.
Once you've been in academia or the research world for a couple of decades, you'll truly understand how little peer review often means. In many respects, it's a popularity contest no different than that one would see between high school kids.
Those researchers and academics who are most outspoken and sure they are correct end up being considered as such. As long as you consistently deny that you're wrong and insist that you're correct, many fellow researchers and academics will believe you, even if you're completely full of shit. When such people are the peers reviewing your work, it's basically pointless to go through with the whole process. Shitty peer-reviewed literature is still shit.
"Public access equals government censorship". This is a quote destin to inflame the /. community.
kinda like this sig... Vista Help Forum
Windows Vista Help Forum
I don't know anything about that, but I do understand that we've always been at war with Eurasia.
...where we have exactly as much science as the free market will bear.
Honestly, if the 'exclusive information' route of making a science organization doesn't allow them to be solvent, we as a society need to reconsider how we fund such organizations. Can they be funded by the government in a way that will allow them to act acceptably independent of government influence? Can they be community funded to an acceptable level of reliability? Subscriptions to exclusive information for libraries doesn't seem to cut it anymore, and I'd rather not go further down the road of science organizations acting as a business selling exclusive intellectual property. I'd like a bit more of a return to a public foundation of science and progress.
Ryan Fenton
we have round one.
When their subscriptions actually do dry up, or they change their business model to accomodate the movement, victory will be ours!
The preceding post was not a Slashvertisement.
They will compensate by sensationalizing the news (sorry i hate to name names), which works well in the short term. In fact a lot of places are doing that. It works well if you are a VP looking to get cash out a fat check and then bail out to some other company having "proven you track record" at the previous company just before the shit hit the fan.
Subscription-only journals aren't dying: they're dead. See http://www.arxiv.org/ or http://jhep.sissa.it/ for more details. The fact that Nature etc. have left it until 2007 (!) to seriously worry about this just shows how little chance they have.
These journals cannot possibly claim that restriciting access to information is in the best interest of the public or bad for science.
The tax-payer pays for the research to be carried out. The research results are then given away to the publishers, who get other researchers to carry out quality control (at the tax-payers' expense). The publishers then sell it back to the researchers for a subscription that is paid by the tax-payer.
Quality control of the information collection is done by peer reviewers (who really do it for free), not by publishers, who only exist because it was necessary in the past for someone to organize all the communication, printing and distribution.
It is another example of "disintermediation" - cutting out the middle-man - as a result of the Internet. The publishers no longer add value.
So efforts to promote science to the general public by making the product of science available for the general public (improving scientific education, etc) are "government censorship" while locking things in overproced journals (Acta Chemica has a $1300/year price tag) is not? They look more and more like the RIAA every day.
Publishing is fundamentally a service industry. What the publishers provide is some task (e.g. binding copies to dead-tree format) that is difficult. With the advent of the interweb many of these tasks (e.g. shipping copies around the world) have become much easier. There is still a market for publishers of science and music (e.g. Special editions, bound works, and stuff that is "better than free") but rather than chase those niches the publishers have chosen to attack their own readers and authors.
This is especially hilarious when you consider the difference. Odd as it may seem, compared to this group, at least the RIAA has some leg to stand on. The RIAA is trading stuff that is typically not shared wheras the entire process of science is based upon sharing things freely and widely. That is how everything works from peer review to the spurring of new developments. At least the RIAA hires their music editors and producers while most editors of scientific journals are paid by their home universities and do this task for free in order to spur the exchange of information. Similarly most musicians are paid by the music producers while most authors of scientific papers are not paid by the publishers in any way rather its the other way around because the authors have to pay for subscriptions to read their own work.
This excange starts to look less and less fair all the time. Especially since more and more people are seeking out papers online rather than in the dead-tree forms.
Viva XXX and PLOS.
I just have four words for these guys: Die in a fire.
A lot of research is taxpayer funded. Shame if the taxpayers get the information without paying a "prestigious journal" publisher.
There's a few things that stick in the craw with the whole scientific journal system.
At least outside of North America, the whole academic sector is funded by the taxpayer. The journals don't fund the research. So, if we are paying for the research in the first place, why on earth don't we the public have a right to see all that's published?
It's hard to stomach the publishers complaints when you realise how they treat the source of their income, the researchers. These folk do the reviewing and editing for free, usually out of office hours. They don't mind this, it's part of the game, but why should a publisher trouser wads of cash for all their hard work?
The time will come when the publishers are forced out of business by an online, peer reviewed, sponsored publication model. Only that time won't be any time soon. It is sad to say that academics are so hopelessly individual they are highly unlikely to be able to join together to beat the publishers just yet!
I predict that this PR campaign will blow up in their faces, big-time. Their target audience this time isn't the unwashed masses camped in front of the tee-vee; it's people who know how to think (and even do so from time to time). Hilarity will ensue as the big smack-down gains momentum.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenpeace#Criticisms
Deus est fatalis
... but I waana get somethin for others peoples works....
I understand publishers get money from subscribers and advertiser and pay out to their writers and in the case of research journals that might even sponsor some of the research.
But maybe this is the horse and cart being removed due to increased car usage.
Public access equates to government censorship????
It would be nice if the government was more inline with what the people want.
But even then it wouldn't be a "public access equates to government censorship"
If there is something that shouldn't be made public... well then that would be government censorship and it wouldn't matter where it might have been published.
You know the drill:
while(!$goodthink)
{
print "IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH\n";
print "WAR IS PEACE \n";
print "LOVE IS HATE\n";
print "Public access equals government censorship\n";
checkGoodthink();
}
are the same as all other publishers, only trying to protect their interests. And like the others, they distrust "free", and even more so the concept of self publishing that doesn't pass through their gates, just like the RIAA. If these gatekeepers want to insure their value, then they just have to prove that what they publish is more valuable or trustworthy than the self publisher. Interesting FUD they're putting out though.
What?
Maybe this kind of propoganda campaign might work for the masses (see death tax, global climate change, and Fox News), but I kind of doubt it'll work on the scientific community who by their very nature tend to question. The other nail against them is that from what I've heard, many scientists don't like the high fees they have to pay for publishing in journals, so there's not exactly a friendly trusting relationship between the two.
Instead of trying to trick people into thinking that free access to information is somehow "bad", maybe they should be emphasizing the things they do provide? I'm not expert on the scientific journals, but I thought one of the things they provided was seperating out the complete junk from legit research. A filter of sorts. Do they currently offer help in editing scientific papers? If not, maybe they should? The question the industry should be asking itself is "What do we provide beyond actually printing and sending out paper?" Previously they've been able to take advantage of controlling distribution, since printing and distribution of information was relatively difficult. Now it's obviously trivial and extremely inexpensive.
It seems to me that free access to scientific information is a reality. Both the people who create the information (the scientists) and the people who read it (mostly scientists) want it to be freely available. Trying to fight it rather than adapt to it is a path towards bankruptcy.
AccountKiller
Freedom equals slavery.
Every "illegal" download euqals a lost sale.
Looks like another legacy industry lying to protect their outmoded business model. After all, if they're selling something of real value (e.g. peer reviewed articles) to the consumer then they have nothing to fear. However, if they've only controlled the flow to this information due to a high barrier of entry in the past that technology has mostly erased now, then let them go down -- and the faster, the better!
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
...so, why don't these experts get together and publish online??? I am sure that advertising dollars from banner ads, etc would pay for their time in spades.
This is just more old media vs new media hoohah. Don't confuse peer review with public access. You've been dragged in by the spinmeisters described in the article.
I was only in the academic world for a couple of years, and helped peer review a couple papers for a professor of mine. In my smallish field (transportation operations research) there was no market for "vanity" journals like there are in some fields.
Maybe some fields are more politically charged than others, mine was certainly not one subject to popular controversy. If you want real "democracy", bear in mind that a significant percentage of the US population believes that the Earth was created 6000 years ago.
Give a man a fish and you have fed him for today. Teach a man to fish, and he'll say "WHERE'S MY FISH, YOU IDIOT?"
Most major advances in science have come from government funding, either basic research which private companies never do because no one can say whether basic research will ever turn a profit, let alone when it might or how much; or through military research. But you are free to have your opinion, attempt to convince others, and even attempt to get the laws changed.
Until that point, thankfully, freeloaders are forced to help pay for all the benefits they accrue (Such as the use of the Internet) through government funding of science. I love the fact that we have a system in which the selfish can not wriggle out of their share of the responsibility that comes with being a member of an interdependent civilized society. I hesitate to even speculate what kind of shithole we'd be living in if the selfish and ego oriented weren't such a minority compared to the cooperative types of the world.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
Enjoy your buggy whip business while you can!
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Complete rubbish. Physics has had preprint servers like arxiv for 15 years now, and the American Physical Society (APS) found NO EVIDENCE WHATSOEVER that subscriptions were drying up because of arxiv. APS publishes a large number of journals at that. I can find things much easier through arxiv but if I'm going to cite something then its going to be peer reviewed. APS actually felt that preprint servers helped so setup one with Brookhaven, and link to a number of their own webpage. Their attrition rate has remained very constant over the same time period and probably has more to do with shrinking funds. The preprint servers help us. Our group put out a couple of papers recently and we got some constructive feedback from people reading the preprints of astro-ph - and some of the points mentioned the referee didn't catch. Its a stronger paper as a result. The preprint servers are also frequently much easier to search for current literature than the journals sites. They have their problems - theres a good number of completely crazy papers on them and its sort of annoying to sift through them - look for submitted to/accepted for publication in the comment field. In short they are great for easy information access and the journals are great for enforcing quality control. The public access to information is an added bonus. Yes, open access to scientific journals AND data should be mandatory. The journals won't die because they do still provide a valuable service in peer-review.
Reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled.
Peer review may be of little value for articles by people who are stars of their field, but that is just a tiny fraction of the articles submitted for publishing. For the rest, peer review filters out incredible amounts of junk (I *have* seen the rejections), and improve the rest significantly (that is called "accepted with major/minor revisions").
[ I have been in "academia" for two decades. ]
I'm kind of surprised to see an article calling attention to an upcoming FUD campaign by the traditional publishers, in a traditionally published journal.
Pleasantly surprised, but still it seems to me that there is an interesting story hidden there.
... and we all know that government censorship is double plus ungood.
If you disagree with me on social issues, then it's pretty clear that you are a narrow-minded bigot.
... I publish in Nature out of principle. From now on I will post anonymously on Slashdot.
While it is true that information can be exchanged more cheaply, and your business may struggle, there is nothing to worry about. Because, quite frankly nobody really cares.
You're middle men. You're ulimately a cost. Your aim is apparently just to continue to exist in a parasitic way. The science community doesn't need you any more. If you want to continue to make money, find a business that people still need. Don't try to artificially manufacture a need. You don't have the power.
If they provide a service of value, people will pay for it.
I think they provide a service of value. Publishers of these journals provide the service of reviewing articles and providing a means to have articles reviewed. IMHO, that is a value that I think many are willing to pay for. They need to push that value to subscribers.
On the other end, people fund researchers to do work. Those same people should also be interested that the research is high quality. The way to ensure that is through journals. Thus, funders of research should also be interested in funding journals (unless they want to keep it secret--a big caveat).
It may just be that the publishers need to look at their model for doing business.
br/
Greenpeace
Most of the work required to make a journal is performed by academics and is unpaid by the publishers. The publisher do play an important part but they get all the money. They then restrict access to the information - and remember, it wasn't even written by them! None of this is in the best interests of society at large and the Internet makes dissemination and searching a straightforward proposition. Roll on the change.
The problem isn't free-access to information, the problem is that they won't profit from that free-access, thus causing their capitalistic minds to panic, and spread misinformation to confuse uneducated individuals in to thinking it's 'bad' or 'a socialist/communist agenda', instead of them facing reality and re-thinking (or adjusting) their business model.
This is very similar to what happened with RIAA and Piracy, and how the frail business model (not the piracy) caused Tower Records to go bankrupt.
So futile.
the only permanence in existence, is the impermanence of existence.
"The consultant advised them to focus on simple messages, such as "Public access equals government censorship."
Simple sound bites are used because people respond. Most people don't want to take the effort to absorb anything more complicated. God knows we wouldn't want to have to think for ourselves.
And have you ever noticed that the sound bites don't even have to be true? "Public access equals government censorship." "The war in Iraq is a war on terrorism." "The jury is out on global warming."
I've also noted that if you dig deep enough you find that it's all about money and power.
The race isn't always to the swift... but that's the way to bet!
I don't know if it is a development that influenced this move by AAP, but the EC is considering new guidlines on open access to research that is funded by EU-grants:
Seems reasonable imho... On a personal and self-interested note, I would also like software that is funded by EU & government (through academia) to be open sourced where possible, starting with the named entity recognition software behind News Explorer (which is developed by the EU's Joint Research Center) ;-)
So it doesn't matter if you are factually wrong, so long as you spend more money than your opponent advertising that you are right. This level of cynical corporatism is astonishing. I am going to punch the next libertarian to espouse the virtues of the invisible hand of the market in the face.
Eric Dezenhall has made a name for himself helping companies and celebrities protect their reputations, working for example with Jeffrey Skilling, the former Enron chief now serving a 24-year jail term for fraud.
Not sure I'd want to put that one on my highlight reel. Sort of like Boise bragging about the SCO litigation.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
Here is a directory of open access journals. One of the requirements for inclusion is "Quality control: for a journal to be included it should exercise quality control on submitted papers through an editor, editorial board and/or a peer-review system."
Quattuor res in hoc mundo sanctae sunt: libri, liberi, libertas et liberalitas.
OK, let's be honest here. The reason we do it is not merely for that "simple satisfaction" (although there is some of that). If you're possibly going to be looking for a job in the near future, you need to be published - often and recently. If you're trying to get tenure, you need to be published. If you've got tenure, then, well, you don't need to be published, but it certainly helps your bargaining position if you're looking for pay increases, etc.
Still, it's a racket.Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
It's true that if the publishers of scientific journals offered their information for free that a substantial amount of their revenue would dry up. However, not everyone would stop buying the hard copy. I'm sure that many libraries for prestigious universities would still buy the hard copy. For the average student or scientist, however, we could care less about the hard copy (it just takes up shelf space). We just want the information.
Furthermore, they could alter their business model by charging a flat fee per submission. After all that is the true value added that they provide: the peer-review system which filters out articles that lack scientific merit and forces researchers to really do their homework. Even a submissions fee of $1,000 is a small amount when compared to the overall budget of a multi-year scientific research project. Of course academic fields with smaller budgets may have to find other business models, but what else is new.
The world changes. Either you can be innovative and survive. Or you can use scare tactics to try to prolong the death of your dying business model.
Of course the system's not perfect; no one ever claimed it was. (Talk about naive.) That doesn't imply it "means little." The question is whether it's better than the alternative, and the answer is clearly yes. Peer review wasn't turned on like a light switch one day for fun and profit, it was developed by working scientists over decades because it was needed and helpful. It continues to be criticized and enhanced today, not that you're adding to that worthy process with an anonymous bitchfest on
Build a man a fire, he's warm for one night. Set him on fire, and he's warm for the rest of his life.
From TFA:
Perhaps all this fist-waving is a little premature?
Breakfast served all day!
I don't get paid if my paper gets in a journal. I don't get paid if my paper is in a proceedings. In fact I usually have to pay to present my paper (conferences).
Free information in the sense of public research is totally possible. Current academic communities rely on journals because they are there not because they couldn't make one themselves. We don't need springer we don't need wiley. In computer science we have the ACM and IEEE, we pay our yearly dues or our institution does and we have access to the papers. You can pay too. $130 USD will give you access to everything the IEEE offers academics.
The point here is that there are money-grubbing scientists. It's not just the Republicans any more.
I'm telling you, the quicker the entire Intellectual Property system goes topsy-turvy, the better. There was a watershed moment, sometime in the last few decades, when copyright, patents, the whole schmear, started working against it's initial purpose - to encourage innovation and creativity. Now, you write a good song and you hope it gets used in a movie and a commercial and you're set for life. How does that make you more creative?
I made my living from the IP system until some years ago, when I noticed the first time I lost revenue because of the copying and sharing of my work without my permission. After an initial few hours of outrage, the part of me that got into this whole business to be creative started to realize "Of COURSE people want to share it and copy it. It's entire value is in it's dissemination. It's what's SUPPOSED to happen."
Then, I went to work to reevaluate how I charged for my ideas and to come up with a way that's not based on commoditizing or objectifying my creativity, but just the opposite: Embracing the fact that these things are ephemeral. They are MEANT to be shared, copied, live a life and then go into an archive, maybe to be found again and maybe not. I don't need to collect a toll every time someone uses what I make, and I don't need to squeeze every last cent.
The final piece of the puzzle for me is figuring out a way to identify my work as my own, not to prevent copying, but to prevent someone else saying they made it. Unless that's part of the deal, that is. Digital Watermarking is still too expensive for a small-market individual like me and there are still some questions about signatures. I read an article about how The Aphex Twin hid his own face in a graphical display of his music. That fascinated me and I'm always bugging the math folk in my little world about these things. An answer will come. I just hope it's Open Source, or at least reasonable.
Reasonableness. I guess that's the solution, no?
You are welcome on my lawn.
The ability to read papers online was the best thing that happened for the progress of science since the invention of since automatic printing was invented. Fuck you greedy people trying to impede the free dissemination of information for lining their pockets. I apologize, these people get to me.
Were will the media get the preliminary studies that they publish as fact?
I like how to show that the PR firm is evil, the example they give is "to criticize the environmental group Greenpeace". As if critizing a political action group is somehow wrong or bad. Or as if Greenpeace has never done anything to deserve criticism.
Did anybody notice that even the summary is a quick lesson in "how to make a straw man".
It is _almost_ more insulting that someone is getting good money to tell corporations how to make "bad arguments" (that apparently stick), than it is that corporations are trying to make obviously self-serving arguments against things.
I mean you have to at least try to make your business model work, but seriously people...
Oh, and, "free information" == "government censorship"? Minitrue would be proud.
after all...
War is Peace!
Cue Carl Sagan....
Innocent people shouldn't be forced to pay for inferior software development.
--"Code Complete" Microsoft Press
Here goes more bashing people who believe in a creator. You imply that people who have moral values or believe in "God" want to live in caves and are afraid of thunder or want to force that lifestyle on everyone else. FYI, I believe in a supreme creator and have moral values. It may also surprise you that I also support the teaching of the theory of evolution in school. What I do not support is the fervent teaching of evolution as ONLY explanation of the existence of life. I do not support teaching that there "is no God" in the public schools. If you want to label those who believe in a creator anti-science, then you might as well apply that label to the father of modern physics and calculus, Sir Isaac Newton.
I only say that other points of view (non-sectarian) should be at least mentioned. I know that I will get a lot of replies from all of the anti-religious nutbags out there, but I do have a valid point. Science have brought us a lot of good things, but it has also brought us a lot of bad things as well.
Scientific progress have brought us motor vehicles. These allow us to get around rapidly and speed the delivery of goods and services. Science has also brought us better medicines, which are used in the treatment of disease. Science have also brought us computers which help us communicate and become much more productive. Science has also brought us new forms of energy as well, making lives easier and longer. Science has brought about gene splicing, pesticides, and farming techniques which increase food supply.
Some of the bad things science has brought us are motor vehicles because they bring about a great number of deaths due to accidents, and their exhaust gasses are a big contributor to global warming (if scientists are correct). Science has also brought about drugs which have as much side
effects as the diseases that they are supposed to treat as well as bringing about the creation of super-bacteria. Science has also brought about computers which are used to surveil, subjugate and control entire populations as well as used to spread pornography, fill our landfills with toxic, technological waste. Science has also brought us new forms of energy many of which contribute to global warming, and threaten the destruction of life as we know it via nuclear war. Science has brought forth the creation of gene splicing, pesticides, and farming techniques that threaten the environment and has increased the amount of desert area and has been responsible for the destruction of critical wildlife and wildlife habitat. Knowlege is dangerous without wisdom. Wisdom is taught in books such as the Bible.
Science should be taught in school but should not be taught in a way that attempts to destroy children's belief in a creator. Science can neither prove or disprove the existence of a Creator. However, the way science is being taught in public schools today essentially teaches that there is no Creator. I resent this just as much as I do with Christmas being thrust upon my kids. Many anti-religious nutbags do will not even agree with a disclaimer put in biology books stating that evolution is just a theory.
I and many Christians, Jews, and people of other faiths are sick and tired of having beliefs like yours thrust upon our children. Even worse is the fact that we are expected to pay for the efforts of people like you to undermine the values taught at home. I lived in a country where atheism and Darwinism was forced upon both children and adults while belief in a Supreme Creator was forbidden. That country was East Germany. I now live in the United States. When the population of the United States was more "God fearing," it was a superb place to live. Now that people like you seem to want to take any mention of "God" out of public life, this country is become more and more of a police state like the former East Germany. No, I am not anti-science because I believe that we should live by Biblical values any more than Issac Newton was for believing the same.
Forbes
Wasnt Forbes the one who released the study that stated it was permissible to drop quality by the wayside? Taking them seriously as an ethical entity becomes hard after seeing that one come out.
1. Bill Gates
Privledged silverspoon Harvardite that dropped out early. Maybe when there are universal, no-refusal (by any means, financial or otherwise) admissions to any university offered to multigenerational citizens of all backgrounds, followed up by a policy that you cannot be discriminated by your nonacademic conduct - then I'll take Harvard, Yale, Princeton and the ilk seriously. Otherwise they're just a bunch of schools to write off.
2. Warren Buffet
Midwestern oddity that somehow got here, and serves no real purpose outside of proving his lack of ethics. Safely ignored and shunned.
4. Larry Ellison
If you dont mind tons of bugs in the code, fine.
7. Christy Walton
8. Robson Walton
10. Alice Walton
The three bad apples who turned Walmart into China*Mart and would be better served to be deported. Since these three have done a 180 to the company in terms of ethics, maybe they'd be well served somewhere that they can regain that lost sense. Although I'd gladly accept a nice 90% bracket on their foreign assets crafted for entities such as them. Foreign asset loopholes need to be closed somehow.
9. Michael Dell
Deport this guy with the Waltons. 90% tax bracket on all foreign assets acceptable.
So, about half the people on the list deservedly need to be respected for the way they came from humble beginnings to contribute so much.
Apparently you dont get the point. They're just as guilty as the guy that's buried somewhere in Aspen. Respect for unethical entities just doesnt make any sense.
And other half are due to Sam old man Walton who might have unceremoniously departed before he could have thought about charity or some other social contribution. But hey all the bucks that even he accumulated and left for his bounty litter, must be spent and given back to the society, or invested in it to make more of it, right?
What part of ethics do you not understand?
They're lost causes. The best you can do is put foreign assets in a 90% tax bracket, used in part to ramrod universal admissions to clean up their mess. Allowing a by-country exemption would just get them to set up fronts for companies that have abused their status.
Is there a company that exists west of the Mississippi that's quite profitable, ethical, doesn't make a point to sell out to Asia and doesnt act like some exclusive university (yes Google, that's pointed towards you)? Or does ethics seem to be inversely proportional to profit?
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
I'm not really up to date on the whole process of scientific publishing or peer review, but from glancing through the comments I got the impression that this whole process is similar to the peer review process that operates on Wikipedia. It seems that what is needed is a centralised service that accepts research for review and publication that is neutral and freely available, sounds like a Wiki to me? Is it just a case of kudos in the scientific community whereby a publication in a journal like Nature holds far more value even though the research in question may be no more thouroughly reviewed than if it was published in a Wiki? I find the situation now quite ironic, considering the early days of the internet where the majority of the content I could find from a text only lynx browser were scientific research papers.
God was my co-pilot, but then we crashed and I was forced to eat him.
The publishers' real problem is not free journals, but rather libraries trying to stop paying the publishers' vastly increased charges. "Free journals" is merely the latest library tactic.
Many librarians and researchers didn't start out caring about the principle of free journals. The publishers' greed forced it on them. Even major research libraries are cancelling subscriptions. The libraries are doing that because the journal prices have been increasing so fast. First the libraries tried switching from paper copies to online subscriptions. So the publishers raised the online prices. Further, the publishers bundled many journals together so that libraries could not cancel the least used titles. The libraries try to form consortia to share subscriptions, but the publishers' license terms stop that.
Even "free" journals cost someone money. PLOS is quite expensive to publish in. Their model is charging the author not the reader.
One factor driving rising journal prices is the increased concentration as big publishers like Elsevier buy their competitors. Some years ago, Elsevier stated their business model as, approximately, serving assistant profs trying to get tenure. In 2005, their profit was 655 million euros on income of 2097 million euros ( http://www.reed-elsevier.com/ ) That's not a bad profit margin.
Journals are priced like drugs, at what the market is perceived to bear. That can be up to $2/page (w/o even any color) ( http://www.ams.org/membership/journal-survey.html )
Journals are obsolete. They're slow to publish, rarely have color, don't have videos, etc. We academics publish in them because administrators use them to judge us. However, when we need something, we search the web, not the libraries. I put my own research first on the web, so that people can find it. Later I write papers.
Finally, to respond to the comment that publicly funded work should be free: That would be nice, but there's a US law giving universities ownership in discoveries resulting from NSF-funded research. What do other countries do?
I'm opposed to this simply because I view it as an arguement to essentially dismantle peer review by flooding it with disinformation.
As the article mentions, there are many organizations that don't like scientific information having consensus and respect.
This is very clear by:
1. The Forced ShutDown of EPA Libraries
2. Scrapping the funding of the NASA earth program
3. Censoring of the US Geological Survey
_
Whats more,
The article mentions this guy is from an Exxon PR firm.
A group which stands the most to gain from disinformation.
There is a saying that, "In the academia, publication is the unit of currency." This is especially true for the more prestigious journals - the more publications you have, the more important you are and by extension what you say will weigh more - if you're lucky enough you'll become more prestige, and join the "star club" - the "big names" in the field - who get to chair committees and have more say in journals, what gets published, etc.
Thus a ladder of power is created for people to climb. It's not hard to see how this power struggle feeds itself, just like the monetary system - just that it's "self-regulated" (read: unregulated)
And it tends to (I've seen with my own eyes) encourage reviewers (who are academics themselves) to form mutual-support clans - you scratch my back, I scratch yours - as a result, when some reviewers review papers they ask "is it my friend? is it in my clan? does it kiss my ass? does it attack my work?", which means a lot of good paper gets rejected and bad papers published.
So far, this system has not broken down due to a few reasons:
1. A few good people - who still do reviews on the merits of papers - who consider themselves to be "professors" thus a role model for their students.
2. Someone who work their way up finally obtains a "god-like" reputation and at this point start to work on their karma - precisely because the reputation could be at stake and so many people are trying to replace you (beating the guy at the top means you'll be at the top instantly), so to say, the higher you are the more vulnerable you are.
Since all systems tend to have flaws and this one seems to work, I don't see it going away. However, this system does not require journals to be paid in order to be prestigious - as long as people still pay to attend conferences, I'm sure this system can survive without the publishers.
On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies, A. Einstein (Score: -1, Offtopic)
Does the Inertia of a Body Depend Upon Its Energy Content?, A. Einstein (Score: -1, Redundant)
Transgressing the Boundaries: Towards a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity, A. Sokal (Score: 5, Insightful)
USE HOT GRITS WITH STATUE OF NATALIE PORTMAN (NAKED AND PETRIFIED)
What exactly is the difference between Uncertainty and Doubt?
Uncertainty of events and Doubt of one's prospects?
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
Great. From now on AAP (Association of American Publishers) is on my black list of organisations that negatively affect social advances for their own bottom line instead of adapting and finding a way to profit in a changing social environment.
There is nothing that wouldn't allow open-access journals to have peer-reviewed articles. In fact, peer review would work much better and more efficiently in an open access publication.
I support the free information movement, as every individual untouched by greed should do. Information wants to be free, and a bunch of PR professionals and executives do not have the power to stop a social movement, especially in the age of the Internet.
http://www.library.ucsf.edu/research/scholcomm/sti ckershock.html
http://library.stanford.edu/scholarly_com/data/jnl _price.pdf
This is an interesting discussion of the impact escalating scholarly journal prices:http://library.stanford.edu/scholarly_com/
But there is one real world form of government that beats democracy, hands down -- the "enlightened dictatorship" (AKA, the meritocracy). Science is one of the few arenas where such a thing has been achieved, for the simple reason that there is no real way to achieve power and respect in the scientific community without producing real results that are genuinely meaningful. And that's what peer reviewed journals are all about.
Granted, that system is expensive and not particularly fair. But it gets results in a big way. It evades most of the issues that come up when committees attempt to achieve consensus, because the folk at the top -- who actually know what they hell they're talking about -- get to rule with an iron hand. That's something that open, democratic systems can't match. That's why China's economy is spiralling upwards out of control while America's economy is spiralling downwards out of control: an enlightened dictatorship beats a democracy every time.
(feel free to disregard this post entirely, informed as it was by two litres of wine and a sizeable quantity of toxic, recreational, and semi-legal alkaloids...)
Except that the people that discover things that saves lives actually DO get nothing more than a "hey thanks", and an off-chance of not being laid-off. The people that are already rich, and didn't do jack-shit other than harassing the scientists and techs, ultimately get all the rewards. The only real exceptions are the odd Nobel prize or having one's name appear in the field's textbooks.
Step 1. Create a public news sensation using scientific data from a free source. (i.e. Something like Cold Fusion, but through a wiki)
Step 2. Show scientists getting excited about information from free sources. Probably use a plant to get it started.
Step 3. Slam dunk the game by having somebody "discover" that the data was faulty/stolen/dirty/evil etc., and blame it entirely on the free information movement.
You KNOW they're thinking about this. The only thing which would stop them is lack of money and maneuvering room.
You also know that everybody would fall for it.
-FL
When America was "god fearing", black people were lynched, homosexuals could be murdered without reprisal, spousal abuse was accepted as a matter of course, innocent people were burned as witches, slavery was tolerated, there was a civil war, women who were raped and became pregnant as a result were ostracized DESPITE HAVING DONE NOTHING WRONG, single mothers were the most reviled form of live on the entire planet, etc.
Sorry, no sale. Everything in the past was ghastly and horrible. A small minority lived lives of comfort, but most people suffered tremendously. Today, thanks to the elimination of fairy tales from the public consciousness, millions and millions of people have rights and freedoms that they would have been denied in any previous age. Millions of people get treated with basic Human dignity, who would been have treated like lepers in the age of Christianity and the hate-mongering that has ALWAYS (without exception) accompanied it.
Today, we don't have murderous inquisitions, we don't have witch burnings, homosexuals aren't murdered (other than in the ultra-religious south), blacks aren't hung for vaguely resembling a mistranslation of some gibberish in the book Genesis, single mothers receive at least a bit of support from the community (atheists, unlike Christians, believe that children deserve to live no matter who their parents are or aren't; before you disagree, note that the bible is VERY clear that children are damned for seven generations if their parents sin, and deserve to die if they are bastards; there isn't any ambiguity in the old testament on the subject at all).
To quote a wiseman of the modern age:
"People laughed at David Koresh for claiming to be the second coming of Christ. I laugh at Christians for worshipping the first coming of David Koresh." -- NegativePositive.
From the article, Dezenhall said "Media messaging is not the same as intellectual debate".
He is right. In a society with a government of the people, by the people, and for the people... stating that the common form of communication is not logical, rational, or about truth is damning. Unless people start thinking we're fucked.
And the time it takes to get something published is ridiculous ! Take the following example from http://hri.iit.tsukuba.ac.jp/tchri Important Dates: June 1, 2006: Call for Papers September 30, 2006: Deadline for Paper Submission February 28, 2007: Completion of First Review June 30, 2007: Completion of Final Review December 2007 (tentative): Publication So i get to wait 5 months until i known the article gets reviewed . If it's ok it gets published in 1.5 years after submission ?!?!?! If it doesn't get published i still lost 5 months with my work idleing, because i compromised to just publish to that journal ! In http://boost.org/ they peer review c++ libraries in 1 month tops ! I get to face the reviewers and reply their quesions, the reviewers are not anonymous also !
> I think the real problem is that peer review happens before publication, not after.
Very few peer-reviews results in the paper being accepted "as is". The paper is usually "accepted with major revisions", or if the paper is very good, "with minor revisions". Even though we always curse the "stupid reviewers" for the additional work, the truth is that these revisions tend to improve the articles significantly. If the reviewer, usually a seasoned scientist, had trouble seeing understanding some point in the original paper, other readers will as well.
I wouldn't really consider it a racket, either. It just appears that way when you frame it a certain way.
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
Let me first state that I am approaching this from the direction of math and physics, hence the problems in other fields of research are not addressed. I trawl the arXiv daily, looking for interesting material, and I absolutely love being able to download preprints for free. However, so much of the tax-funded work out there is inaccessible to the average citizen who can't shell out $800-$1500 per journal. When a researcher is working at a public university, using government grants, their output should be freely and easily accessible, period. Unfortunately, the system of publishing currently in place is an archaic relic from days of yore, when everyone doing science had "Sir" in front of their names.
I fail to see how IEEE doesn't make a profit, given the amount they charge for institutional subscriptions to their journal archive...
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
I believe in a supreme creator and have moral values.
Why do you lump these together? Seriously. There are large differences between American states regarding what proportion of their population considers themselves believers in a supreme creator. Yet by any standard measure of the morality of behavior, the states where the largest proportion believes in a supreme creator are also the states with the highest incidence of immoral behavior, including domestic abuse, divorce, alcoholism, prostitution, and even abortion. While certainly some who profess belief in a supreme creator are moral, given someone at random who does, and someone at random who doesn't, we're more likely to find moral behavior from the person who doesn't. The lowest divorce rates, for instance, are in the disproportionately-athiestic New England states, whereas the highest rates are in the true-believing states of the deep South.
If your argument is from morality, and we look at the true distribution of moral behavior in a dispassionate, scientific way, then we have to at least consider the proposition that causing people to doubt the existence of a supreme creator will lead to an increase in the average level of morality from them. Of course, it may not - it could be that the correlation works the other way around, and that there is something about "naturally" moral people that leads them to doubt a supreme creator, but that doubting a supreme creator, for those who lack this something, fails to result in an increase in morality. As posters here never tire of saying, correlation is not causation.
"with their freedom lost all virtue lose" - Milton
Hello,
I've never posted here before, so this may end up being a bad idea, but the topic (and responses) were compelling.
I work at a decent-sized medical journal (distribution over 16,000), and the issue of open access is seemingly omnipresent, and certainly something we try to address. Unfortunately, I believe it is not as cut and dry an issue as many of the posters here would like to believe, and it is a shame to see considered arguments thrown out in favor of comments about Orwell and the hope that "these guys die in a fire" (seriously, wtf?).
I agree with the underlying assumption of open access supporters, namely that information (especially the potentially life-saving kind) deserves to be widely and freely disseminated. However, as the cliche goes, free is never truly "free." Editing, publishing, distributing - all of these processes cost money. Even online publication requires funding. PLOS, which has been presented by several here as an ideal model, relies on grant money and hefty fees charged to its authors.
The subscription model certainly has its limitations, but I think a compromise solution would work better in the long run than completely abandoning something that has worked for many years. I'd point to some of the steps my association has taken: making back issues available online at no cost, offering free subscriptions to individuals and orgs in developing countries (both through HINARI and our own program), putting critical news online for free, working with the NIH on adding government-funded research to their databases, and more. We even have a feature on our website where anyone can access any article if they click a button that says something to the effect of "this is relevant to my situation" (designed so non-members can access information that might help them or a loved one).
I offer this as evidence that journals are not the money-grubbing evil empires that many here have seemingly misconstrued them as. Rather, they're simply trying to get the best science out in the best way possible (pretty much the same aim as open access advocates).
Also, on a slight tangent: comments to the effect of "Quality control of the information collection is done by peer reviewers (who really do it for free), not by publishers, who only exist because it was necessary in the past for someone to organize all the communication, printing and distribution" display a certain arrogance or ignorance that tends to annoy people like me, the lowly "middle-man." In my experience at my office, I've learned that there are an alarming amount of people in the scientific community who A) think putting out a publication is as easy as hitting some magic "print" button, and B) can't write for shit. Grammar, spelling, so much of it is so atrocious that it makes me wonder whether the author is really that illiterate of if he just doesn't care. Either way, the people charged with putting out the information (whether they're doing editorial tasks, or laying out the information, or illustrating charts, or coding/maintaining a web site, etc) do play a vital role in ensuring what goes out is good material, and will continue to do so - arguing that "organizing communication" is a skill relegated to the history books seems to run completely contrary to reality, and is completely negated by the fact that the comment was posted on a Web site that does exactly that.
Ok, that's my speech. Thanks.
With scientific journals the authors don't get paid (often they are asked to cough up fees to the journal for publishing it). The referees don't get paid either. The only one who gets paid is the publisher. So there's no reason to believe that moving on to a free, online publication would cause any loss in the quality of the submissions or of the referee process.
And that bit about how free publications will be censored by the government -- is anyone stupid enough to fall for that? If the government wants to censor something (say, for national security reasons, or because Bush, Cheney, & Michael Crichton disagree with the results) it will be censored just as easily in a for profit journal.
I forgot to mention something relevant that is known to all academics but apparently unknown to many /. readers.
There are two types of publishers: for-profit and non-profit. The for-profit publishers are commercial corporations like Elsevier. They, as is their duty to their shareholders, charge what the market will bear, do everything they can to jack up their prices, etc. One for-profit journal might cost an individual $200/year; while a library would pay $500-$1000/year or more. All numbers are approximate.
The non-profits are the professional societies like IEEE. In the US, a non-profit organization is allowed the privilege of being a non-profit in return for providing some benefit to society. IEEE's income is membership fees (I pay IEEE $200/year incl some journals), conference registration fees (perhaps $200/day), journal subscriptions ($40-$100/year), and misc. The professional societies set the prices just high enough to break even (and pay overhead). That's a totally different philosophy.
Even a narrow field may have 10 relevant journals. If your work is interdisciplinary, then there may be 30 journals (and many conferences) that occasionally publish something interesting. Everyone is starting new journals.
While both classes of journals are technically obsolete, only the for-profit journals' prices are breaking the libraries' budgets. First the smaller colleges like RPI got hit. (RPI cancelled most of its print journals and is now cancelling many of its online subscriptions.) However even Stanford, Cornell, etc, are now feeling the pinch. The current solution for the poorer libraries is to pay for any individual articles that researchers ask for. In response, the commercial publishers may now charge $20 for one article, and that's rising.
As a researcher, I feel it my moral duty to support the society journals whenever possible. However, sometimes the publishers' journals are excellent. There's a feedback loop here. A journal is defined to be good if papers (mostly in other journals) cite its papers. Therefore people want to publish there, so its editors get to select the best, etc. This is related to the concept that sometimes the best SW for a particular app is commercial.
More tidbits:
In at least two recent cases, the complete board of editors of a for-profit journal have gotten so angry at their own journal's price (set by the publisher) that they've quit en masse and formed a competing non-profit journal.
For-profit publishers can be sensitive on this topic. Around 1994, Gordon & Breach sued the American Institute of Physics and American Physical Society for publishing a survey showing that their journals were among the most expensive. AIP/APS won. See http://barschall.stanford.edu/index.html
There are many online stories about this. Librarians have been debating it for more than 10 years now. Here is one ref: http://www.dlib.org/dlib/march01/frazier/03frazier .html
My own feeling: It's time for a reorganization of the whole higher-ed and research system. Abstractly, things have never been better (in many fields of CS). I can do research on a laptop; I can learn what a researcher in Tasmania is doing from his website. However, the institutional system is more and more obsolete and irrelevant, and indeed, more and more, hindering progress.
What is modern science about? It is about names and brands.
Journals and scientists is nothing more than business of marketing. The larger name or brand you got (Cell or Schoen) the better you are off.
Name supposed to be reflecting scientific contribution of the person and brand supposed to be reflecting scientific contribution of the journal.
They are not. Period. Why do people do science? To publish, to get a name, ????, profit. Why people do peer-reviewing? To get influence (that is one side of the name). Why people go to the conference? To market their name.
The true and utter revolution in science will be complete anonimity of the scientist. Only very restricted group of people should be able to access databases linking scientific results to their authors. Chief editors, heads of the grant committee.
N91324542435 submits a grant proposal listing hugely successful papers
N3241234,
N43523452435 and
N234234. The papers secretly linked to the author, but very few people know who he actually is or where he lives.
THAT will eliminate nepotism and cronyism existing in modern science.
THe numbers mentioned are randomly generated so there is absolutely no longevity of the number except through the scope of the current grant or paper.
This is not how it is doen. When I review a paper, I know that bustard Smith or charming Waterman wrote it and that affects me whether I want it or not.
On the conferences the results and discussion should be presented by randomly generated avatars (ala ananova).
After that there will be no single person doing research for brand recognition.
I do not believe in karma. "Funny"=-6. Do good and forbid evil. Yours, Oft-Offtopic Flamebaiting Troll.
Just to correct some of the misinformation in some of the comments I've read. I'm a peer reviewer for both for-profit and non-profit journals, and the process is the same across the board.
Reviewers do not have access nor are given access to who the authors of a paper or study are. This is one effort to minimize 'friend/enemy' bias in the review. While for some very small, eclectic fields, one could guess at who the author was, for 80-90% of the field, this blind review process works.
Peer-review is "free," in that reviewers (at least for all the publications I've reviewed for) are not compensated for their work in reviewing the studies submitted. This is sometimes fairly substantial work on the part of the reviewer which could account for hours of the reviewer's time. In both publishing models (PLoS and traditional), reviewers aren't compensated.
So the cost of publishing a paper-based journal is fairly well understood. It costs money to regularly publish paper-based publications such as a journal, newsletter, or book. For journals that accept advertising, the subscription cost can be lowered since there's another revenue source for publication.
For a journal like PLoS, one has to wonder where the $2500 author submission fee goes. The FAQ on the website doesn't really answer the question -- why does it cost so much when all of your processes are online and done virtually? If you say something like "software," realize that supposedly their software is open source (or open source based, although you can't get it anywhere from them). They say this is what it costs to run the organization, but to me it seems like just a way of pushing off the costs of publication from one source to another (subscriber to author). I'm not sure that's a good thing or not, since that actually distributes the cost among fewer people. Time will tell whether the market agrees or not, but given initial reaction to PLoS, it looks like it's the model of the future.
The point here is that there are money-grubbing scientists. It's not just the Republicans any more.
I'm skeptical of anything that breaks the known limits.. Especialy that which is a little shakey on the measurements and make wild clains.
Do a Google search for free enerty. There are mechanical driven water heaters with over unity effeciency, and the well covered hydrogen cell using stainless steel cylinders. It's free power from water or magnets or some other over unity effeciency device.
I'll stick with peer review and repeatability before I bite on these wild claims. Most of the time I look these up to keep up with the latest snake oil investments that need funding and will have a production model in 5-10 years.
I like the water friction water heater and it's over unity claims and the fire department that bought it as scientific proof of it producing more BTU's out then are put in. It's a little lacking on volume of water, temprature rise, Joules in - Joules out.. These are the numbers that have to be carefully and accurately measured and repeated by peers. Until then, it's another snake oil salesman.
The truth shall set you free!
Right.
This fits right in with the rest of the Bush administration's approach:
1) Democracy means we kill you.
2) Birth control means abstinence.
3) Secrecy means protection.
4) Surveillance means freedom.
5) The Constitution doesn't support habeus corpus.
6) The Constitution means "I'm the Decider."
Before the Bush shills complain that nothing in the article refers to Bush, the bottom line is: this is the corporate world's (not to say human) basic attitude, and Bush merely represents that attitude. So there is nothing different between the publishers trying to limit access and Bush's political behavior.
It's the same mind-set: The "Enemy" is everybody but me.
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
You couldn't be more right, Technician. The peer review process is one of the great institutions of civilization. It's survived generations of corner-cutters trying to game the system. It's scary to see zealots and fanatics trying to undermine it in order to advance their whacky agendas - religious or financial. Whenever I hear about how there's a conspiracy to keep creationists and global warming deniers out of peer journals, I shudder. Anybody who says that is attacking one of the foundations of our civilization, not just science.
You are welcome on my lawn.
This article smacks of propoganda... the way its written, you might assume that journals like PLoS (Public Library of Science) are not Peer reviewed. However PLoS is peer reviewed and on top of that it has a fairly high impact factor in the scientific community.
As for God being my servant? Of course not. But there are Christians in the world who do follow the commandments, who do believe in Jesus with all their hearts, and who are veritable paragons of faith. Their prayers go just as unanswered as mine did. NO prayers get answered, except in so far as is consistent with random chance. Prayer doesn't pass the muster of even the weakest statistical tests. You're better off betting on horse races. I'd say that pretty much shuts the book on Christianity.
Only a fool respects all other points of view. Many points of view aren't deserving of respect. For example, believing in astrology (which is provably wrong), believing in crystal healing (also provably wrong), believing in the power of prayer (provably wrong, which simultaneously disproves the word of the bible completely), the mythology of the bible (there was provably no flood, no exodus, no wandering the desert, no series of wars to conquer Israel, and no king David).
You might think this is just random, undirected crankiness, but this really is something that people have looked into and researched extensively. Consider even this site: Why Wont God Heal Amputees. The bible doesn't say that prayer will make you go to heaven, it says that the prayers of the faithful will HEAL THE FUCKING SICK. Yet the sick are unhealed.
There isn't a single example in all of Human history of ANYONE -- no matter how faithfully they or their family or their church prayed -- regrowing an amputated limb. Ever. Therefore, the bible lied, Jesus lied, Christianity is a false religion. QED.
Israeli archaeologists actually go out and look for the remnants and signs of the events that occurred in the bible. Guess what? There's no evidence for any of them. Most archaeologists who've studied the middle east are in agreement that there was no Hebrew monarchy, and that the ancient Jews got started not as nomads but as a cult in an already settled region. That's what the real-world research has concluded. The bible is as reliable as greek mythology, norse mythology, egyptian mythology, or Grimm's Fairytales. Archaeological evidence is substantially better, being based, you know, on observable facts. Not unlike the observable fact that the amputated limbs of truly holy, faithful men are just as impossible to regrow as the limbs of sinners, despite any amount of prayer whatsoever.
Schizophrenia going away isn't particularly unusual. It's an unpredictable, transient disorder. Metastasized tumours the size of grapefruits (including the tumours of atheists) will occasionally go away spontaneously. Conversely, if your prayer group were to pray for a child's amputated arm to grow back, nothing would happen. Schizophrenia clears up coincidentally all the time. Limbs never do (which makes them the ideal test of the power of prayer). Most people with schizophrenia don't recover, even with prayer. I had three entire congregatons at three very different Christian churches praying for me, plus my entire extended family praying for me to this very day. It has never done a single bit of good. If anything, the false hope it provided made me wait for things to improve, rather than taking actionl The only thing that has ever helped was turning my back on God and putting my life into MY hands, putting faith in MYSELF, turning to my OWN skills and abilities for salvation. When you finally say "Fuck God" and start living for this life, you can actually accomplish things in the world; you can get out there and help yourself and those around you.
Read that website I linked: This page in particular will make it very clear to you. It explains about coincidences in clear, unambiguous language that even a theist can understand, should they be willing to engage in some basic reasoning.
Stupid idiots cannot be reason with , but I will try one more time:
... ARE willing to kill your family, right?"
"And you still haven't addressed the glaring contradiction between the bible's claims of cures for faithful and the complete absence of most types of miracle cures, other than those that would have happened anyway regardless of faith."
I believe that I have. MOst people who go to church on Sunday live their lives other days withoutmuch regard to the teachings in scripture. Sure, they do a few things but they regard at least one very important thing. That thing is the Sabbath. Can you tell me what day the Bible sets aside for the Sabbath? When does it begin, and when does it end. This is not the only thing, but it is an important factor. I have seen miricles within the congregation I attend, and no, this is not some tent revival where all different kinds of people show up, "get healed" and never be seen again. When hurricanes blew through west Florida entire neighborhoods had their houses severely damaged or destroy. Among these homes was homes of members of another congregation of the same faith. NONE of these home sustained any major damage even though the home was not built any better than surrounding structures. The same thing does for the congregation in MO where an entire neigborhood save on house was severely damaged by tornadoes.
"Burn the daughters of priests to death if they sin? I doubt it..."
That is NOT what it says. If they commit idolitry they are to be burned (after being killed beforehand). We don't live as a nation under the covanant. Israel has long ago abandoned the covanant and is therefore divorced as a nation.
"Prevent women from teaching? You've probably had female teachers, and I doubt you're out campaigning for the PTA to bar female teachers. You're breaking God's law by not doing so."
Once again, you have taken a verse out of context. Women are supposed to teach. They teach their children (boys and girls) they teach their husbands, etc. But when it come to the actual service, it is the men's job to do the teaching.
"If your (hypothetical( daughter were raped, would you press charges? The bible COMMANDS you to accept money from him and force him to marry her -- regardless of what she thinks of this. You fucking tool -- you actually obey this retarded book?"
Yet another verse you have taken out of context, but that is not really your fault because of the way it was mis-translated. The rape here could more or less be considered by todays standard as statutory rape. Forcible rape calls for the death penalty for the rapist.
"You'd better be willing to murder your son if he doesn't obey you. Just in case you ever DO reproduce, I'm going to wish you luck in prison."
More out of context quoting. This only applies to the very worst of the worst disobedience, and even then the father does not kill his son. His son is brought for trial in front of the nation. This is talking about the son who destroys the family, sqanders the familys resources on drug, woman, or whatever thrills him without regard to his family. Someone who makes a habit of doing stuff like this without reform shows that he does not love his parents, himself, or any other.
"This isn't actually advice, but I think it's important to note that your god is a god of war and death. He is pretty sure that you'll have to kill your family. You
This is a plain out and out lie. Not only are you a stupid idiot, you are also a liar.
Most of what you have quoted above has been taken out of context. The time that these commandments were given was a time when Israel was going through purification and was a quaranteen measure meant to protect the nation from widespread wrongdoing. In the United States thanks to people largely like you, we are overrun with drugs, violence, adultry, among many other things. It is no wonder that the divorce rate is over 50%. It is also no wonder that families have to live paycheck to paycheck. All of the taxes and government mandated expenses they pay goes to a very corrupt government.
You sound like Madeline Murray O'Hare your sister in belief, She too was a very bitter person.
END OF DISCUSSION.