I really don't like this idea.
If I forget to make a special effort to shake randomly, everyone I want to send a photo to is going to end up finding out my natural jacking rhythm & amplitude.
It's all very well to accuse scientists of elitism, but what do you expect us to do? Miss out all the important technicalities and treble the length of our papers to rid them of confusing terminology? Attach an appendix spelling out everything from Watson and Crick onwards to every journal containing a paper about a PCR?
No - scientific journals are for scientists (or more to the point, journals within a particular field are for those working in that field). It is the job of scientific correspondents in the general press to find ways to translate information from the journals into a form suitable for a general audience. Some do this very well. More often than not, they print whatever happens to fall out of their arse half an hour before their deadline. Really lucky scientists get an email a few minutes before some hideous misrepresentation of their research ends up plastered all over the Daily Mail and have a chance to correct some of the more egregious misunderstandings. Usually, however, the first they know of it is when "average Joes" start contacting them for more information about something they never said.
Peer-reviewed journals are a means for researchers to communicate their findings to people who know what they're going on about in the most concise and efficient way possible. That they're not intended for the general public is not emblematic of some desire to conceal the information from the public. Am I concealing information from people that don't speak English by posting this in English on an English website? Are the Japanese concealing things from me by posting messages in Japanese on Japanese websites? No - we're just sending information to our intended audiences in the most convenient way.
My goal as a scientist is not to spend my every waking hour transmitting every detail of everything I do to every passer by. It's to communicate it to those who will find it immediately interesting or useful and to leave the business of selecting the bits that the public might be interested in to those whose job it is to inform the public. Is being a journalist more important to me and those I work for than understanding what I'm doing? Is it fu**.
In reply to the original blogger. Yes, it's perfectly possible to do scientific journalism well. Journalists just have to be more upfront about the gaps and uncertainties in the science and rediscover a few seemingly unfamiliar words like "may", "might" and "could".
It's probably irrelevant - if they've become so scarce that the scientists couldn't find any, the population is likely to have dropped below the minimum viable level and inbreeding depression will finish off any stragglers.
Unless they've all f-ed off to somewhere remote and unexplored with cleaner water.
Slashdot Mirror
I really don't like this idea. If I forget to make a special effort to shake randomly, everyone I want to send a photo to is going to end up finding out my natural jacking rhythm & amplitude.
It's all very well to accuse scientists of elitism, but what do you expect us to do? Miss out all the important technicalities and treble the length of our papers to rid them of confusing terminology? Attach an appendix spelling out everything from Watson and Crick onwards to every journal containing a paper about a PCR?
No - scientific journals are for scientists (or more to the point, journals within a particular field are for those working in that field). It is the job of scientific correspondents in the general press to find ways to translate information from the journals into a form suitable for a general audience. Some do this very well. More often than not, they print whatever happens to fall out of their arse half an hour before their deadline. Really lucky scientists get an email a few minutes before some hideous misrepresentation of their research ends up plastered all over the Daily Mail and have a chance to correct some of the more egregious misunderstandings. Usually, however, the first they know of it is when "average Joes" start contacting them for more information about something they never said.
Peer-reviewed journals are a means for researchers to communicate their findings to people who know what they're going on about in the most concise and efficient way possible. That they're not intended for the general public is not emblematic of some desire to conceal the information from the public. Am I concealing information from people that don't speak English by posting this in English on an English website? Are the Japanese concealing things from me by posting messages in Japanese on Japanese websites? No - we're just sending information to our intended audiences in the most convenient way.
My goal as a scientist is not to spend my every waking hour transmitting every detail of everything I do to every passer by. It's to communicate it to those who will find it immediately interesting or useful and to leave the business of selecting the bits that the public might be interested in to those whose job it is to inform the public. Is being a journalist more important to me and those I work for than understanding what I'm doing? Is it fu**.
In reply to the original blogger. Yes, it's perfectly possible to do scientific journalism well. Journalists just have to be more upfront about the gaps and uncertainties in the science and rediscover a few seemingly unfamiliar words like "may", "might" and "could".
You can blame the Nazis for that - it's become very difficult to get permission to experiment on the disabled since WWII. Even if you ask them first.
It's probably irrelevant - if they've become so scarce that the scientists couldn't find any, the population is likely to have dropped below the minimum viable level and inbreeding depression will finish off any stragglers. Unless they've all f-ed off to somewhere remote and unexplored with cleaner water.