_(cropped).jpg)
The authors of the arsenic review paper I described in the previous post have put up a response to my comment. It's a bit hard to find the comments for this paper, so here's a link.
Basically, they don't read online science that hasn't been peer-reviewed, and thus the content of their article was written independently of the post-publication discussion of the Wolfe-Simon paper. They would not have cited this discussion in any case because it was neither peer-reviewed nor personally communicated to them. They feel that although some online communication about science may be of high quality, its value is negated by the simultaneous presence of low-quality material.
"They feel that although some online communication about science may be of high quality, its value is negated by the simultaneous presence of low-quality material."
ReplyDeleteThe same one can say about research articles in Nature and Science. So shouldn't we read/cite these journals anymore?
On the contrary.
Imho the best development in the last 10 years was the emergence of an online discussion culture. Every journal should open a comment section under each article. This would facilitate the exchange of ideas, identify weak points of papers more rapidly, give hints, how to improve the concept of the paper (if there is any) and prevent the occurrence of scientific Famiglias.
Most of the PLoS Journals do have a comment section for their papers don't they? But I rarely see any comments there.
ReplyDeleteWhere a comment is available I often find them useful... but have never actually heard what others' impressions might be.
As for scientific Famiglias - I really don't see anything being able to prevent them. We are a social species and no matter how hard we try I think there will be associations among kindred spirits. I'll even go so far as to argue these "families" can have some value so that 'preventing' might be too onerous anyway. Lets just keep things transparent and hold folks accountable.
Let's not forget that this sorry incident began with a press conference where the senior author made statements that so not seem to be supported by the evidence in the "peer-reviewed" paper. Press conferences are not equivalent to publication in the peer-reviewed scientific literature but they can't be ignored.
ReplyDeleteIt didn't take long for several experts—including Rosie Redfield—to recognize the problems with the paper and the press conference and bring it to the attention of the scientific community. This happened within days of the press conference.
Tim McDermott and Barry Rosen can keep their heads in the sand as long as they want. Real scientists know who to listen to and who to ignore on the internet just as we know which "peer-reviewed" papers to read and which ones to toss in the garbage.