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Lights, Camera, Experiment!

Posted by timothy on from the watch-how-my-e-cat-works! dept.

theodp writes: The New Yorker's Jamie Holmes takes a look at How Methods Videos Are Making Science Smarter, helping scientists replicate elaborate experiments in a way that the text format of traditional journals simply can't. The Journal of Visualized Experiments (JOVE), for instance, is a peer-reviewed scientific journal that now has a database of more than four thousand videos that are usually between ten and fifteen minutes long, ranging in subject from biology and chemistry to neuroscience and medicine. "Complexity was always an issue," JOVE co-founder, Moshe Pritsker explains. "Even when biology was a much smaller enterprise, it relied on a degree of specialized craft in the laboratory. But, since the end of the nineties, we've seen a huge influx of new technologies into biology: genomics, proteomics, technologies like microarrays, complex genetic methods, and sophisticated microscopy and imaging techniques." And, as the popularity of the decidedly non-peer reviewed Crazy Russian Hacker's YouTube videos shows, methods videos aren't just for research scientists.

8 of 14 comments (clear)

  1. Is literacy a problem in science, too? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    Mistakes and entertainment notwithstanding, I'm saddened by the dumbing down of the written language through the introduction of video. On the other hand, some people are just bad writers. More labs should employ technical writers, just as the employ illustrators and other specialists.

    1. Re:Is literacy a problem in science, too? by Calydor · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Text has its place. Video has its place.

      For a lot of things, especially where you need to be able to search for something, text is far superior. For stuff like this, I would really hope they maintain text as the main focus, with videos to show proof-of-concept for lack of a better term. Details are much easier seen than imagined, after all.

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      -=This sig has nothing to do with my comment. Move along now=-
    2. Re:Is literacy a problem in science, too? by oheso · · Score: 1

      They're particularly addressing reproducibility and demonstrating new lab techniques. Sometimes it's far easier to demonstrate something than to describe it in ways that are not susceptible to misinterpretation.

    3. Re:Is literacy a problem in science, too? by turbidostato · · Score: 1

      "we have illustrators at NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory. They're wonderful."

      Not because of the sci part but because of the PR one, so they don't count.

    4. Re:Is literacy a problem in science, too? by Teleshop · · Score: 1

      its really difficult to understands http://www.stepupheightincreas...

  2. And in other breaking news... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    YouTube videos help me fix my car and household appliances! This is a seachange in home repair technology. The revolution is upon us.

  3. A Picture is Worth a Thousand Words by LifesABeach · · Score: 1

    Maybe one day JOVE will consider Home Depot, and Ikea? After that, I believe they will need more servers.

  4. I have always treated JoVE as a scam journal by students · · Score: 1

    The reason is they are among the many low quality journals which send me spam asking me to submit papers. Admittedly, their spam is better written than most I get.

    --
    Simon's Rock College