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Mozilla Launches Initiative To Adapt Scientific Practice To the Open Web
An anonymous reader writes "Today Mozilla announced the Mozilla Science Lab, a project to help modernize scientific practices to make better use of the open web. "Scientists created the web — but the open web still hasn't transformed scientific practice to the same extent we've seen in other areas like media, education and business. For all of the incredible discoveries of the last century, science is still largely rooted in the "analog" age. Credit systems in science are still largely based around "papers," for example, and as a result researchers are often discouraged from sharing, learning, reusing, and adopting the type of open and collaborative learning that the web makes possible.' Hopefully this can be another step in moving away from traditional publishing practices, and encourage a new generation of scientists to make their data available in more useful ways."
But....but...they're going to use "next-generation web solutions to solve real problems in science..."
Whatever those real problems in science are and whatever those next generation web solutions are...but Mozilla will be there....*eye roll*
Mozilla's been doing quite a bit of following in the past few years. Nice to see them take on something new and potentially significant. I don't know if they're the right folks for the job (they certainly have the cache') or if they'll succeed, but it's a good way for the Foundation to think that doesn't merely involve mimicking what Google does.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
One thing that would be great would be to fund studies that's sole purpose is to verify/reproduce someone else's work. Obviously, with the current state of funding, this really doesn't happen. Once something is published, we as the next researchers are forced to take results as fact - which may not be true due to error, low yield, or (hopefully not) fabrication of results (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_misconduct).
I really do believe that incentivizing verification of results and repeat studies (with reasonable limits, of course) would improve scientific research tremendously. However, it's even less likely to take hold than moving away from "publish or perish."
Yeah, I could see that statement as being true.
Many fields are so well-developed that in order to stay competitive, researchers must be highly specialized, ignoring all other branches of their discipline for their one specific area of expertise. Time spent learning those other branches is time not spent on the all-important publications. Even though learning about other areas might be better in the long run, the immediate goal of keeping one's job must be met first.
Unfortunately, this seems to be a natural consequence of a system where "breaking even" requires ever-increasing effort. Since we haven't had our BitCoin story yet today, I'll bring them up. Consider how the effort to mine one coin increases exponentially. Very rapidly, the technology required to be a viable miner has gone from just a spare videocard to specialized (and expensive) hashing hardware. Just as in academia, only the people who specialize can hope to keep up with the others who specialize. There just isn't time for anything else.
The solution to this is to base rewards on something that doesn't require increasing effort, but that's rather difficult in academia. Research itself gets more difficult as more discoveries are made.
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
The Mozilla Science Lab is funded by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, which definitely has real money. And three dedicated people who know what they're doing can accomplish a lot.
Space game using normal deck of cards: http://BattleCards.org
It is obnoxious that someone can publish their results without providing the code & data available for independent verification.
When are we going to return to the _proper_ scientific process & analysis?
How does Mozilla even have a plan to change this broken symptom of "everything behind a paywall" ?
Many fields are so well-developed that in order to stay competitive, researchers must be highly specialized, ignoring all other branches of their discipline for their one specific area of expertise. Time spent learning those other branches is time not spent on the all-important publications. Even though learning about other areas might be better in the long run, the immediate goal of keeping one's job must be met first.
In my experience, having worked in physics research, and with connections and friends in chemistry and engineering, this effectively not true. There may be a couple people so overworked they have zero time for extra activities and some are short on time when starting families, but otherwise my colleagues could all easily read extra papers and news in outside areas more so if they wanted to. The issue isn't so much time, it is an actual motivation and interest in other research (which may still partially be influenced by amount of free time).
People seem to work in subfields because they are interested, or otherwise end up developing a strong interest in the field they are in after joining it. They would rather seek out more directly relevant papers even if they may not be as useful or novel than stuff in other fields. Many still read up on other specific fields of interest. I especially see this for people who changed fields at some point, and they still frequently keep up on the previous field in addition to their new one. I still get someone stopping by once a week with a, "you have to see this, it is really cool (or really stupid...)," from them digging through papers outside of their field.
While softening the publish or die approach to academia would free up a lot of time, most of that would still end up going back into the same subfield work for a lot of the people I know. And for those that would use that time to explore other fields, they are already doing so now, just would do even more so.
A decentralized peer-to-peer content distribution and review system (torrent). Seeding is endorsement of the content.
List publications endorsed (seeded) by researchers you trust.
Download a publication, read it.
If it passes your scrutiny, you seed it too.
As is, I would say scientists do leverage quite a bit of practices as exemplified by the open web, just it might not be as open to the public.
The last three labs I worked in shared work with a wiki system internally. Friends I know in collaborations more than a couple people also have similar setups. They are usually not open to the public, but access on some of them are granted to people who ask or at least people on similar projects. Usually the hesitation to open it up comes about because the write ups there are quite menial and/or rough, and in one case because of some red tape from the university about what type of documents could be shared with the public. I know there are documents on our current wiki would rather not have to answer questions about from people misreading it, and would much rather answer questions directly if they had any. E.g. I wouldn't want someone to try to figure out what voltage and current settings we use for a piece of equipment from the document on the wiki when people on the team know the dial is off by quite a bit, but if they asked me I would give them the actual values that such things would correspond to.
I'm not saying there isn't more need for such tech and opportunities to improve access and use. A lot of groups have to make do with what is already available as opposed developing something for their specific needs. This limits them to more general tech non-science software creators made or more specific tech that only exists because a larger research group somewhere else actually had the time and personnel to dedicate to developing the software. The more such software that is out there and the more well developed it is, the more likely it will meet the needs of a group that can't develop their own stuff.
But I think it isn't appropriate to say science needs to be modernized by introducing such web tools, as many of them are already there and making a big difference. They could use even more such tools though, and there are steps that could be taken to make sure the tools are more visible. Although, ultimate, especially if the goal is to share data and work outside collaborations and people willing to ask for stuff, the amount of sharing won't be limited by the tools, but by the amount of time the scientists will put into it instead of doing more direct work.
I for one can't wait for academic credentials to be judged based on .... #cough# ... blogs.
Yes. If you don't have access to material you are discouraged from learning. When I finished graduate school I lost all access to scholarly literature. My learning, my ability to acquire more knowledge, has been curtailed.
If you're scared of your govt then you need to further restrict its powers
Vote 3rd Party in 2016 and beyond
"Scientists created the web"
No—_engineers_ created the web.