It’s becoming increasingly difficult to know where one stands when writing about – or doing – science. Instead of waiting for the peer review process to take its course and for journals to print the received wisdom, life on the cutting edge is about debating papers released to astro-ph, a slightly policed archive of papers submitted by academics when reviewed, but also sometimes when submitted to the journals or even before. Writers are picking up on that, and that’s fine – I love the fact that you can now read an article on a blog or in New Scientist and with a click be reading the paper.
Some projects have more problems; we’re struggling with Galaxy Zoo to learn what to say when – more on that tomorrow. For now, here’s Emily on what it seems will always be known as the ‘Phoenix flap’.
John Goodman on August 5, 2008
Astro-ph is a wonderful facility. It’s a pity when it is used for unscientific purposes, such as the article that appeared last week presenting an interesting new object, deliberately published without coordinates. In what sense does this further our knowledge via the scientific method? In no sense. The authors should be ashamed of themselves.
Nereid on August 7, 2008
“tomorrow” was 5 August; it’s now the 7th (and already the 8th in some parts of the world) … did something funny happen on the way to tomorrow?
zofia magrian on August 7, 2008
It is increasingly difficult to know. Like why is my course 3 years?
chrislintott on August 8, 2008
John – presumably the referee for the journal will point out this omission; the authors point out that their paper has only been submitted so one needs to take that as a health warning. I doubt there’s anything sinister behind it.
Chris Lintott’s Universe » Voorwerpen and more : Science in the public eye 2 on September 25, 2008
[...] been gently prodded by Nereid in the comments to my previous post on the topic, I want to say a lot more about scientific reporting. The reason for the delay in this [...]