I didn’t find so much time to update the blog during the past few months – there are too many attractions out there, and so many interesting things to do. The never ending problem is that there is too much to read and too little time. This is, however, what also other people find, for example genomeweb.com
Pedro Beltrao at the Public Rambling blog says there never seems to be enough time to keep up with all the literature researchers keep churning out. In 2009, 848,865 papers were added to PubMed, he says — that’s something like 1.6 papers per minute. While there’s definitely no scarcity of outlets to publish, is anyone even paying attention?
Or the Latest Everything blog
From a half-forgotten Einstein quote to the complete works of J. S. Bach, everything is instantly available. But what can we really do with it all? A HALF-CENTURY ago Marshall McLuhan wrote: “We are today as far into the electric age as the Elizabethans had advanced into the typographical and mechanical age. And we are experiencing the same confusions and indecisions which they had felt when living simultaneously in two contrasted forms of society and experience.”
who republishes theNew Scientist article (04 April 2011) pp. 1-3 in Surfing the data flood:Why omniscience is a curse (see also Nature mag about “Too many tasks“). A closely connected problem of this information flood is that of diminished quality – we need to slow down somewhat as Beisiegel recently wrote in the ZEIT (14th April 2011)
Besser denken! // Think better!
Die Wissenschaft braucht eine Entschleunigungsstrategie // Science needs some deceleration strategy
1. Eindämmung der Publikationsflut // Stop the publication flood
2. Grundsätzlicher Erkenntnisgewinn braucht dauerhafte Grundfinanzierung // Proven amount of new knowledge needs permanent and basic funding
3. Mehr Gewicht legen auf inhaltliche Beurteilung von wissenschaftlichen Leistungen // Judge more by content of scientific output
4. Ächtung von strategischer Autorschaft // Ban strategic authorship
5. Forschende müssen ihre Forschungsanträge selbst schreiben // Researcher need to write applications by their own
6. Transparenz bei der Darstellung der Datenerhebung // More transparency when describing Methode of data acquisition
7. Gute Forschung braucht Zeit // Qualified research needs time