Category Archives: Philosophy

Genetics, Philosophy

Publishing on the recommendations of the head of the authors’ lab

Campbell writing at Edge about Maddox

Despite his original establishment of the peer-review process at Nature, Maddox always had strong reservations about its conservatism. These were perhaps best reflected in his view that the Watson and Crick paper on the structure of DNA wouldn’t pass muster under the current system. That paper was published as a result of recommendations by Lawrence Bragg Continue reading Publishing on the recommendations of the head of the authors’ lab →

 

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Philosophy

Paper, supplement or what?

A reviewer just wrote in response to one of our papers

I am first concerned over the structure of this manuscript, being divided into what will be a printed article and an on-line supplement. The description of what I consider to be essential methods are fragmented across these two segments, making the article disjoint and difficult to follow.

I fully agree as I have the same problem with many Nature and Science papers. By the online evolution papers are even more difficult to read. Curiously, even PLoS does this split although there is no printed paper at all.
What about abandoning the supplement practice in favour of a full and an abbreviated version of an article? So we would have an abstract for quick screening, a brief version for the printed journal and a long, fully referenced online version, yea, yea.

Addendum 1-7-09

NG continues with this artificial setup

Starting this month, readers will notice a new section called Online Methods in our Letters, Articles and Technical Reports. Material previously published as Methods and Supplementary Methods is now combined, fully edited and hyperlinked in the new format that will be present on the journal’s website and reprints, and can be downloaded in PDF format. Readers of the monthly print journal will now be directed to find the Methods online.

 

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Genetics, Philosophy

Is evil contagious?

Here comes an update of the Lucifer post as there are new books on the market. Some want to understand (like Arendt or Amery) while others (like Nietzsche and Sartre) would strongly oppose. I am somewhere betweenboth parties with an increasing tendency to explain human (and corporate) behavior by social group pressure while there is still room by inborn personal differences. Continue reading Is evil contagious? →

 

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Genetics, Philosophy, Software

Mirror neurons and science careers

Spiegel online has an excellent report about mirror neurons, empathy, social background and research (taking up a theme in the ZEIT 2003)

“In unserer Kultur sind am erfolgreichsten die”, sagt Gruen, “die am meisten von ihren Gefühlen, von der Fähigkeit zum Mitgefühl abgeschnitten sind.”

Continue reading Mirror neurons and science careers →

 

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Allergy, Philosophy, Vitamins

Shift happens

The current issue of the blue journal has more stuff on the vitamin D hypothesis (that has been shifted recently into the opposite direction). I agree with the editorial that

Intervention studies of vitamin D in the primary prevention and treatment of asthma raise a number of difficult scientific, ethical, and regulatory issues.

That may be true while the editorial includes the widely quoted myth that immunological effects occur only at high doses Continue reading Shift happens →

 

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Philosophy

Epistemic disruption

A new First Monday paper examines our modern publishing system that has been driving the art of doing science into a primitive strategy of making impact points.

These disruptive forces are represented by changing technological, economic, distributional, geographic, interdisciplinary and social relations to knowledge. The article goes on to examine three specific breaking points. The first breaking point is in business models — the unsustainable costs and inefficiencies of traditional commercial publishing, the rise of open access and the challenge of developing sustainable publishing models. The second potential breaking point is the credibility of the peer review system: its accountability, its textual practices, the validity of its measures and its exclusionary network effects. The third breaking point is post–publication evaluation, centered primarily around citation or impact analysis. We argue that the prevailing system of impact analysis is deeply flawed.

yea, yea.

 

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Genetics, Philosophy, Software

A better search engine for science?

New rumors say about Wolfram alpha

In this respect it is vastly smarter than (and different from) Google. Google simply retrieves documents based on keyword searches. Google doesn’t understand the question or the answer, and doesn’t compute answers based on models of various fields of human knowledge.
…
or those who are more scientifically inclined, Stephen showed me many interesting examples — for example, Wolfram Alpha was able to solve novel numeric sequencing problems, calculus problems, and could answer questions about the human genome too.

I have applied for a test account as I am interested in methods how to deal with genomic and all the other pentabyte of data — we urgently need a paradigm shift as single genome prices will go down to 1000 €. Continue reading A better search engine for science? →

 

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Joke, Philosophy

Is the Nobel prize predictable?

To be a Nobel candidate may be predictable if I am reading correctly a paper on archiv.org. The “traditional” impact factor is largely useless

as it ignores the importance of citing papers: a citation from an obscure paper is given the same weight as a citation from a ground-breaking and highly cited work

It may be, however, that the (PageRank derived) CiteRank is holding some promises – giving weight by whom you are cited. In this case, even a 100 citation paper can lead to a Nobel prize.
But is it predictable to get a Nobel prize candidate? Certainly not. I agree with a news feature about a science manager who

recently read Outliers, a book in which Malcolm Gladwell makes the case that
exceptional people get where they are partly because of the exceptional circumstances in which they find themselves, rather than through exceptional ability or sheer hard work.

Yea, yea.

 

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Philosophy

Peer review – a charade?

quoting from an email this afternoon:

Only 8% members of the Scientific Research Society agreed that “peer review works well as it is.” (Chubin and Hackett, 1990; p.192).
“A recent U.S. Supreme Court decision and an analysis of the peer review system substantiate complaints about this fundamental aspect of scientific research.” (Horrobin, 2001).
Horrobin concludes that peer review “is a non-validated charade whose processes generate results little better than does chance.” (Horrobin, 2001). Continue reading Peer review – a charade? →

 

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Genetics, Philosophy

Darwin and successors

1859 edition of the Origins of Species
Here is a picture the original 1859 edition of the “Origins” while I still wonder if this book is about the origins or about the transitions of species.
That may be understandable as I am currently reading David Berlinski’s 2008 book “The Devil’s Delusion”. His (English) Wikipedia entry is not Continue reading Darwin and successors →

 

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