Slashdot Mirror
Crowdsourcing and Scientific Truth
ygslash writes "In an
opinion piece in the New York Times Sunday Review,
Jack Hitt states that comments posted to on-line articles, and elsewhere on line,
have de facto become an important factor
in what is accepted as scientific truth. From the article: 'Any article, journalistic or scientific, that sparks a debate typically winds up looking more like a good manuscript 700 years ago than a magazine piece only 10 years ago. The truth is that every decent article now aspires to become the wiki of its own headline.'"
is well known and studied topic. Before NYT noticed...
is a well known theory. Before NYT noticed...
"THE greatest bird news of our lifetime occurred at the height of the George W. Bush administration."
WRONG!
This is the greatest bird news from the George W. Bush administration.
It's long been true that a top reason to go to academic conferences isn't only for the paper presentations, but rather for the hallway/dinner/bar conversations about those papers. More formally, many scientific journals will publish short letters or commentaries about papers they've previously published, and that practice used to be even more widespread (at some journals a "letter" has morphed into a mini-paper, but they used to really be letters to the editor).
The same is now true online with something like Terence Tao's blog: it's interesting as much for what other mathematicians post in reply, as for what Tao himself posts (though his posts are quite interesting). The main difference as I see it is that the number of people participating is much greater (which has good and bad parts), and, in comparison to hallway conversations, the conversations persist and get referenced back to more, since they're in a semi-durable written medium (that's the "wiki-like" aspect the article discusses).
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
looking more like a good manuscript 700 years ago than a magazine piece only 10 years ago
What does this even mean? I can't parse it and its early Sunday morning but I'm not that drowsy or stupid (although some would disagree with the latter).
Obviously its relevant that he references GOOD 700 year old vs just "a" 10 year old. Obviously its important that magazines are time filling fluff for the masses / chewing gum for the mind, and in the old days manuscripts held real individual contributions of science work (like a modern journal / preprint archive / e-journal). Manuscripts didn't do much for complimentary copy other than the occasional thank god here and there, but magazines are almost all complimentary copy now?
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
'Any article, journalistic or scientific, that sparks a debate typically winds up looking more like a good manuscript 700 years ago than a magazine piece only 10 years ago.
Not here. Two or three lines of summary are usually enough for the equivalent in comments of a thermonuclear war.
Good thing the debunking campaign wasn't led by a Slashdot poster, otherwise the home page would've been "this-woodpecker-is-dead.com"
Its interesting to observe how much commentary on articles is devoted to shouting down the opposition rather than making observations and/or corrections of the original content. Given the accelerated pace of such discussions on-line, the utility of spurious research in support of questionable legislation has been reduced significantly. In other words, if you spot an ivory-billed woodpecker today, your claim might not survive long enough to secure funding or implement conservation measures. That is; without your supporters declaring that the time for further research and comments is over and now its time to act.
Today's crowdsourcing serves to reduce the half-life of bad science.
Have gnu, will travel.
Jack Hitt makes an excellent point. The value of comments are to provide context to the article. What is the value of comments? Is is (the value of Web 2.0) - (the value of Web 1.0).
Comments contextualize the article. The questions raised in comments are the test by which the article itself is valuable or not. Does the article speak to the questions? If yes, the article is valuable.
There is a huge difference between scientific truth and, alternately, popular perception. I don't even want to try to explain that, it's so obvious - and there may some be more pertinent matters to address, in this.
I think we can accept that comments sections do not make much of a forum for development of scientific anything. Comments are comments. Comments are not journal articles. Comments can be said to be peer reviewed, to some extent, but then again, comments are not journal articles, comments need not follow any specific format for reporting of questions and results, comments are just comments.
I'm afraid that that all may be beside any points raised in the linked article, however. What the article looks like to me, in all my sense of bias: It looks like a way of trying to excuse a lack of significant content in articles, in lieu of some kind of perceptual bias about comments. It think it's just as well for the birds, though I know it's been said, "It's the thought that counts."
very good
Comments are comments. Comments are not journal articles. Comments can be said to be peer reviewed, to some extent, but then again, comments are not journal articles, comments need not follow any specific format for reporting of questions and results, comments are just comments.
I did not RTFA. I second your point. But even if we were to take a more generous view of commenting sections, the problem of noise filtering remains. Comment sections are a perfect example of what Asimov said best :
“Anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that 'my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.'”
The amount of effort required to parse through comments to find gems of significant value is enormous. I know that this is that age of the crowd and so on, but there are certain issues on which the opinion of the crowd has on average very little value because of the complexity of the topic and the years of experience required to make informed conclusions. The trade-off between expert opinion and open crowdsourcing varies widely depending on what is the topic under discussion, and the userbase of the particular site. Vaccines and autism on a Californian site, for example.
Entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem.
As OP (here on /., not the author of the article), I'd like to re-raise here in the comments a point in my original post
that got edited out:
There are many who disagree with the thesis of TFA. It is interesting to note that they are trying to make their point - where else? - in the comments on the article, in comments here on ./,
and elsewhere in the blogosphere.
Don't worry, it's an article-writer noticing that the internet is doing something (crowd-sourcing research, which it did in this example), and trying to take credit for himself, in his own comment section.
This article is the soul-searching of an author, trying to find relevance in the post-newspaper world.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Since "science" cannot prove historical events, the only thing left is opinion. By definition, if something is repeatable or testable, it cannot be "proven" by scientific methods. All you are left with is belief.
In thinking about how I look at articles and commentary I realized I factor in comments almost as much as the article itself, particularly any inherently subjective article, for example one that discusses the social or economic impact of a scientific discovery.
The article itself is likely to have a good signal to noise but suffers from bias, the comments typically have very poor signal to noise but can often correct or at least expose the original biasing. Taken together I at least feel like I have a better sense of 'truth', particularly if the subject is likely to expose my own bias.
In other words, yeah the article makes sense initially but I'll reserve judgment till more people have posted about it on slashdot.
Although the author set out to analyze the role comments play, I found his objective disposition of woodpecker sightings' impact on environmental fundraising. Almost bordering on cynical, the author does point out the suspicious nature of theses sightings in a way that I'm sure will ruffle the feathers of many set-in-stone environmental saviors.
https://www.accountkiller.com/removal-requested
The Web over Internet is a true cognition multiplier.
Very true, the only problem is that the multiplicative factor is highly variable and in many cases can be much less than 1.0.
I thought science looks for "consensus" nowadays, not "truth."
Liberty in your lifetime
"Yes it is"
"No it isn't"
"You are an idiot"
"I am the smartest person in the world!"
Repeat until the next subject is posted.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
Is it just me, or is it quite ironic that at the time of writing this, this will be only the 47th comment on a subject active for 12 hours on slashdot. Apparently metacrowdsourcing (crowdscourcing about crowdsourcing) isn't all that popular.
For reference sake, there have been 7 more articles up (at least by my filters) which have already garnered the following amounts of comments. Notice that the less scientific seems to be where more, er, uh "crowdsourcing" happens. :)
Is Google the New Microsoft? --> 366
Study Aims To Read Dogs' Thoughts --> 113
Apple Security Blunder Exposes Lion Login Passwords In Clear Text -- >144
Biochemist Creates CO2-Eating Light That Runs On Algae --> 76
Some USAF Pilots Refuse To Fly F-22 Raptor --> 191
Ask Slashdot: What Language Should a Former Coder Dig Into? --> 229
Unblocking The Pirate Bay the Hard Way Is Fun --> 51
One man's pink plane is another man's blue plane.
I think we can accept that comments sections do not make much of a forum for development of scientific anything.
So what? You don't need much of a forum for "development of scientific anything". There's a means to publish scientific knowledge via arXiv and a means to discuss it via blogs and community discussion sites. This argument boils down to "but they don't have formal peer review". Put that in and journals become obsolete.
and different media can be used to discuss the falsifying data. So, what does "type of media" have to do with "scientific truth"? (hint: nothing) I guess the author's main point is that "crowd sourcing" is being ignored by the "elite scientific media". NYTimes, not your best moment here...
Consensus != Truth
Casteism
Comment boards and science don't mix. Comment boards are the new religion, spreading FUD and turning nonsense into science simply because "enough" people have drunk the Kool-aid.
I haven't thought of anything clever to put here, but then again most of you haven't either.
You would be amazed at what you would understand after reading Riemann, and why I mentioned about skipping Bohr and Einstein --- who (especially Einstein) were essentially repeating Riemann. Very enlightening.....
Appeal to authority, whether the authority is a crowd or a bearded man in a white robe, is a logical fallacy.