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YouTube for Science?
Shipud writes "The National Science Foundation, Public Library of Science and the San Diego Supercomputing Center have partnered to set up what can best be described as a "YouTube for scientists", SciVee". Scientists can upload their research papers, accompanied by a video where they describe the work in the form of a short lecture, accompanied by a presentation. The formulaic, technical style of scientific writing, the heavy jargonization and the need for careful elaboration often renders reading papers a laborious effort. SciVee's creators hope that that the appeal of a video or audio explanation of paper will make it easier for others to more quickly grasp the concepts of a paper and make it more digestible both to colleagues and to the general public."
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/can/ speak (well) in one context does NOT mean that one can speak well in another. Nor does it mean that one is inclined to.
/some/ people consider to be science such as Sociology, Economy, etc. Just so there's not confusion on what we're talking about.
While many scientists may not be good a making small talk at parties, we are paid lecturers you know. You don't teach to a class of freshmen and present at meetings six times a year without learning a thing or two about public speaking.
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Just because one
Btw, from they way you've worded things here, you're assuming that I haven't done any public speaking nor performed any lectures (i.e. been/am a lecturer); bad assumption.
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Within the narrow confines of explaining their research, scientists can be very eloquent.
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Can be but rarely are.
You're also assuming that aside from the profound amount of time/work going into a paper, that after the fact, the researcher(s) are willing to put significantly more time/work into developing a proper presentation, doing it, and uploading it and going through yet another review process. I'm going to have to say that given the sheer amount of time between writing the paper and it being published, and the video explanation showing up, the usefulness of this service is profoundly insignificant i.e. by the time the video shows up, the paper will be old news. Must like journals have become because of pre-print servers such as the arXiv.
The only thing that I see this as is a couple "Scientists" getting it into there heads that it'd be a "good idea" to enter the arena of "reality tv." Any self-respecting Scientist will stay away from this service and continue going to the conferences and workshops that do a *much* better job of it i.e. you can't talk to your monitor and expect a reply.
Btw, just to be clear, I'm taking about real Science (i.e. Physics, Chemistry, Biology, etc) and Mathematics not what