Posts Tagged ‘Center for History of Physics of the American Institute of Physics’
Peer review and the new media
by orgopete on Feb 25 2010 (3422 Views)
I attended a Macintosh Users Group recently. (Yes, I am a Mac user.) This meeting was unusual. Natali Del Conte, a tech writer for CNet and CBS, was the featured speaker. She talked about being authentic, social networking, and how technology has changed how we get information. She argued that gone are the days that information is simply pushed to us and that Walter Cronkite is the most trusted name in news.
A detail I have come to think more about is what we know. I remember that stomach acid was thought to cause ulcers, but Marshall and Warren have received a Nobel prize for their discovery of the role of Heliobacter pylori and its role in peptic ulcers.
Mitch (Feb 08) and azmanam (Feb 02) have posted on congressional misunderstanding of science and false or poor science reporting, respectively, but I don’t think chemists are as cognizant of the accuracy or correctness of textbooks or peer reviewed papers. There have been a few cases in which errors have entered the chemistry world.
I wrote the the archivist at the Oregon State University Library inquiring about whether there was any correspondence regarding a paper Pauling published (there wasn’t). I wondered what the referees may have said. Now, I have been thinking how this is like the comments to a blog post. One of the really interesting things about the new media, is errors can be pointed out. They can be argued and open to everyone.
I have been thinking about how our ideas of atomic theory have evolved. In doing so, I have been reading a fascinating series of transcripts from recordings deposited at the Center for History of Physics of the American Institute of Physics.
It was interesting that some people thought Niels Bohr had confused the literature with his papers. However, overall, what I liked was how these transcripts contained the personalities of the scientists, their interests, and in some cases their ideas (or biases) about topics being discussed. I felt these transcripts from leading scientists were like our modern internet (although generally without the details of the science).
Our modern internet has no rules. It can be difficult to sort out the wheat from the chaff. We need to learn who to follow and who to ignore. Peer reviewed journals only give the filtered result. The referees reports are confidential. Comments are not published except in blogs. Now that science is moving toward electronic publication, would a new model for scientific publication improve the scientific world?
Just to note that this is not unusual in chemistry. Organic Synthesis has long provided a kind of review for a select set of procedures. I don’t foresee H.C. Brown’s papers becoming ignored, but independent reports could prove useful. Similarly, critical steps to improving yields would be helpful. You can find examples of this in the Organic Chemistry Forums.
Should online journals allow comments? Would it be useful? How could it be done? Would it be science?
