6 ms·

I want to believe this so bad. I'm just ... leery of one-man research being published on a blog.

by Vivtek 16y ago

Vivtek 16y ago
Then, too, I also badly want to believe in the concept of one-man research published on a blog.
- tel 16y ago
  Sorry to burst your bubble, but I have to ask: why? I believe a great deal in the capability of individuals to accomplish great things, but I don't care how ingenious the methods, how confident the claims, how insightful the theory... I want to see science as a group activity. Because no matter how good you are, you need replication and criticism, and constant skeptical feedback. I'm not saying it's impossible to get that by yourself, but I certainly don't believe in it so much.
  - cynest 16y ago
    I believe his point was that research published by a single researcher on a blog is sketchy, and that he wishes that scientific discoveries could be done by individuals. If the researcher in question can provide proof of their claim, then normal peer review will happen.
  - Vivtek 16y ago
    Science as a whole can only be a group activity, of course - without replication of findings, it isn't really science (just mad science). But the peer review process as it stands necessarily entails a certain barrier to entry. While we all would like to believe that every deserving idea gets peer review, in practice, most people don't have the time to bother with a submitted paper unless it's coming from an institution they've more or less heard of. How could it be otherwise? There are huge numbers of crackpots out there, and institutional affiliation is an efficient way of filtering them out. My wife wants to do theoretical physics research (she's qualified: she has a doctorate in theoretical physics) but unless she's affiliated with an institution, it's unlikely she'll get anything published, or so she says. The problem is that unless you're a rock star, affiliation with an institution entails teaching, which in turn translates into all-out effort for roughly 22 hours a day by my own observations of the past semester. The resulting Catch-22 is that my wife can't reasonably do research at all, and that's illogical; she needs no resources but time and access to books and preprints, which she has at home. So I'd like to see some research done using these new-fangled informational access tools we have now - research that is both sound and eventually makes its way into traditional peer review simply on the basis of its soundness, and not because the institutional affiliation of the researcher makes it plausible. This is one more thing that I think the Internet can do for us, and I'd like to see it happen. Of course, the romantic in me just likes the idea of the lone mad scientist in his lair discovering room-temperature superconductivity, because that is the twenty-first century I signed up for. Today room-temperature superconductivity, tomorrow super-intelligent lab rats and cheap immortality. It's all good.

I want to believe this so bad. I'm just ... leery of one-man research being published on a blog.

by Vivtek 16y ago

I want to believe this so bad. I'm just ... leery of one-man research being published on a blog.

Vivtek 16y ago

Then, too, I also badly want to believe in the concept of one-man research published on a blog.

tel 16y ago
Sorry to burst your bubble, but I have to ask: why? I believe a great deal in the capability of individuals to accomplish great things, but I don't care how ingenious the methods, how confident the claims, how insightful the theory... I want to see science as a group activity. Because no matter how good you are, you need replication and criticism, and constant skeptical feedback. I'm not saying it's impossible to get that by yourself, but I certainly don't believe in it so much.
- cynest 16y ago
  I believe his point was that research published by a single researcher on a blog is sketchy, and that he wishes that scientific discoveries could be done by individuals. If the researcher in question can provide proof of their claim, then normal peer review will happen.
- Vivtek 16y ago
  Science as a whole can only be a group activity, of course - without replication of findings, it isn't really science (just mad science). But the peer review process as it stands necessarily entails a certain barrier to entry. While we all would like to believe that every deserving idea gets peer review, in practice, most people don't have the time to bother with a submitted paper unless it's coming from an institution they've more or less heard of. How could it be otherwise? There are huge numbers of crackpots out there, and institutional affiliation is an efficient way of filtering them out. My wife wants to do theoretical physics research (she's qualified: she has a doctorate in theoretical physics) but unless she's affiliated with an institution, it's unlikely she'll get anything published, or so she says. The problem is that unless you're a rock star, affiliation with an institution entails teaching, which in turn translates into all-out effort for roughly 22 hours a day by my own observations of the past semester. The resulting Catch-22 is that my wife can't reasonably do research at all, and that's illogical; she needs no resources but time and access to books and preprints, which she has at home. So I'd like to see some research done using these new-fangled informational access tools we have now - research that is both sound and eventually makes its way into traditional peer review simply on the basis of its soundness, and not because the institutional affiliation of the researcher makes it plausible. This is one more thing that I think the Internet can do for us, and I'd like to see it happen. Of course, the romantic in me just likes the idea of the lone mad scientist in his lair discovering room-temperature superconductivity, because that is the twenty-first century I signed up for. Today room-temperature superconductivity, tomorrow super-intelligent lab rats and cheap immortality. It's all good.