Slashdot Mirror
How Blogs Are Changing the Scientific Discourse
quax writes "Mainstream media always follows the same kind of 'He said, she said' template, which is why even climate change deniers get their say, although they are a tiny minority. The leading scientific journals, on the other hand, are expensive and behind pay-walls. But it turns out there are places on the web where you can follow science up close and personal: The many personal blogs written by scientists — and the conversation there is changing the very nature of scientific debate. From the article: 'It's interesting to contemplate how corrosive the arguments between Bohr and Einstein may have turned out, if they would have been conducted via blogs rather than in person. But it's not all bad. In the olden days, science could easily be mistaken for a bloodless intellectual game, but nobody could read through the hundreds of comments on Scott's blog that day and come away with that impression.'"
"climate change deniers"?
Ah, where would we be if we couldn't put others down ... makes you feel good, huh?
The peer review system for scientific journals is broken. It was supposed to ensure that only valid research which takes a field forward would actually get published. Techniques such as blind and double blind reviewing were supposed to help in ensuring that there was no bias towards specific researchers such as those who were considered to be leaders in the field. However what happens in practice is usually a long way from that ideal, vested interests and group think often result in new, fresh ideas not being published (older academics pulling up the ladder) and mutual back scratching is very common. Reviewing is rarely blind let alone double blind and so all the abuses those are supposed to prevent can (and do) take place. New approaches to publishing ideas and possibly even research results should be encouraged. Blogs are also far from ideal, but if it helps get ideas out to a wider audience then they're a step in the right direction.