 |
|
| FriendFeed is the easiest way to share online. Learn more » |
science21
A room to discuss the "Science in the 21st Century Conference" being held at the Perimeter Institute Sep 8-12 2008 (http://science21stcentury.org)
Do openscience people like http://www.scivee.tv/ or is there a competitor that is preferred?
Bora Zivkovic to ScienceOnline09, Science 2.0, The Life Scientists, Science Online, ScienceOnline2010, science21
Fwd: You are all invited to ScienceOnline2010! - http://scienceblogs.com/clock... (via http://friendfeed.com/coturni...)
Alexei, Martin Fenner, Lisa Green and 5 other people liked this
Reminder: anyone in the world can now attend Science Online 2009 London without leaving the comfort of their pyjamas or computer on August 22nd: http://network.nature.com/people.... Please pass the word!
Michael Habib, Bora Zivkovic, Lisa Green and 10 other people liked this
But the best part of conferences is the social hours -- those don't seem so fun sitting in front of a computer screen.
- Donnie Berkholz
Michael R. Bernstein to Science 2.0, Open Notebook Science Solubility Project, The Life Scientists, science21, Science Online
WebLab: a data-centric, knowledge-sharing bioinformatic platform -- Liu et al., 10.1093/nar/gkp428 -- Nucleic Acids Research - http://nar.oxfordjournals.org/cgi... (via http://friendfeed.com/webmave...)
Ruchira S. Datta, Jason Winget, Jean-Claude Bradley and Steve Koch liked this
Seems that the website (http://weblab.cbi.pku.edu.cn/) is down. ::edit:: got through on a second try
- Jason Winget
Hey, a real-time links has appeard on friendfeed - might be quite nice for live blogging
Might be, not overly convinced of the way it appears (seems to break up items) but will need to have a closer look. If viewing a single item it could be good for live blogging.
- Cameron Neylon
headline-grabbing scientific reports are the most likely to turn out to be wrong - http://www.economist.com/science...
Michael Nielsen, Bill Hooker, Neil Saunders and Shirley Wu liked this
Projects with bigger potential impact are more likely to be published in CNS or as headlines - but are also much riskier and more challenging. Not a surprise that more of these would turn out to need followup. That's why we need to have standards for reproducibility.
- Shirley Wu
I think there are 2 wrongs here: one as in the results are incorrect, the other as in so hyped up by the media report that the conclusion reached by readers will be wrong.
- Neil Saunders
+1 Neil. Media creates unrealistic and sometimes faulty expectations. Maybe science blogging can ameliorate that!?
- Shirley Wu
Where is the evidence that "the results are incorrect"? Not in this Economist piece. And not in the PLOS Medicine piece on which it is based. (That refers to clinical trials papers, but not to the scientific literature.) So where is the evidence for what you are writing in the comments above, or is it opinion? ;-)
- Maxine
It's been a bugbear of mine for a long time. Let's forget the wrong part. Media tends to either go for doom and gloom, or complete overhyping
- Deepak Singh
Ah, media, well I am not going to argue about that! But the link here is about the scientific literature specifically. As it is a media article, though, to quote Deepak, it must be going for "doom and gloom, or complete overhyping" ;-)
- Maxine
Just to clarify: I was referring to an abstract notion of "results being incorrect" in order to compare with the over-hype issue, not to this article or any one publication in particular.
- Neil Saunders
Event on 24 Sept: Scientific Researchers and Web 2.0: Social NotWorking? from Scientific Researchers and Web 2.0: Social Not Working? forum on Nature Network London - http://network.nature.com/london...
Deepak Singh, Cameron Neylon and Richard Akerman liked this
Second of British Library "Talk Science" quarterly cafe scientifique evenings. Timo Hannay talking. London, 6-8.30 p.m. I'll be there.
- Maxine
from Bookmarklet
If anyone (other than Timo!) is going to be at both events, that would be great, as you can summarise some relevant points from science21 for us on the 24th. I hope the science 21 meeting goes well, Sabine, it looks great from having just read your recent blog post update. (I like your response to the second private physicist!).
- Maxine
i am hoping to do both. The bl one is the challenge but will do my best,
- Cameron Neylon
from fftogo
Don't forget they give out chocolate, Cameron (or they did for the last one, anyway). Makes it all worthwhile ;-)
- Maxine
Chocolate and/or catching the last train from Paddington....hmmmm...anyway it's in the diary and the rest of the day is currently clear so _should_ work.
- Cameron Neylon
It was interesting to attend virtually but the audio was challenging to make out - and virtual chocolate is no fun :( I microblogged a few items http://search.twitter.com/search...
- Richard Akerman
Yes, Richard, but virtual chocolate really has no calories. That's the upside to an otherwise disappointing experience.
- Jill O'Neill
They didn't give us chocolate this time;-(. We got "bags for life" instead.
- Maxine
I'm curious to know who has heard of the OSTI Eprint Network, which accesses some 5 million Eprints, including the arXiv preprints? - http://eprints.osti.gov
Dustin liked this
One hand raised
- carolh
I'm interested to know because one of my goals of attending this conference is to understand how to better promote the Eprint Network and OSTI's products. Of course, everyone knows of arXiv but the Eprint Network, which intersects in a way with arXiv, is hardly known.
- Sol Lederman
never heard of OSTI Eprint Network http://www.osti.gov/eprints/ - I would have assumed it would have been integrated in WorldWideSciece? But I'm not a working researcher in any case, so I may not be the best sample.
- Richard Akerman
Hi, Sol! I've heard of it. (Of course, OSTI is one of our member organizations)
- Jill O'Neill
It's not ringing any bells.
- Michael Nielsen
I've heard of it and tried to use it, but I find it very difficult to navigate and the results don't feel comprehensive. IMHO, Google Scholar has pretty much replaced this as a tool. GS indexes individual researchers' homepages in addition to repositories like ArXiv, which is exactly what OSTI Eprints does.
- Hilary
Hilary- Google scholar can't access the Deep Web. There are some 4 million documents in the Eprint Network that are federated in real time, plus the 1 million documents from crawled sites. So, I would guess that Google Scholar would not access more than roughly 20% of what's in the Eprint Network.
- Sol Lederman
Sol - do you know what the actual overlap is? I tried a couple of searches on eprints and couldn't find any documents that weren't also findable via Google or Google Scholar. Google has been making advances into indexing the "deep web" (http://googlewebmastercentral....) so technically Google (GS?) could index most or all of what is found in the eprints network. Also, there are many...
more...
- Hilary
My apologies if I sounded negative in my first and second comments--on the positive side, I have both heard of the site and used it! I realize you are looking for ways to promote the site-- I was researching preprint resources for biologists, so you should take my comments as being from a different point of view. If it helps, I think the site would really benefit from having a more user friendly search interface and display of results.
- Hilary
Hi Hilary - No worries. All feedback is good, pleasant or otherwise. I've asked Dennis to respond to your concerns and have forwarded your comments to him.
- Sol Lederman
The terminology is a bit confusing because eprints is also a specific repository software http://www.eprints.org/softwar... - when I read "A distributed search across E-prints on Web Sites and/or Databases" I still don't know if it means "across open access articles" or "across eprints servers". Also, how does this differ from OAIster - I guess the databases part is the differentiator?
- Richard Akerman
I'm curious to find out what people mean when they use the word "eprint" and what they mean when they use the word "preprint"...
- Hilary
Science in the 21st Century conference recap - http://jdupuis.blogspot.com/2008...
Michael Nielsen, Sabine Hossenfelder and Cameron Neylon liked this
Science21 Highlights: Inclusive and Exclusive Definitions - http://scienceblogs.com/princip...
carolh and John Dupuis liked this
Comments on the Collins, Fuller, and Smolin presentation, and the evening discussion with Collins and Smolin.
- Chad Orzel
I referenced the conference in a blog post. - http://federatedsearchblog.com/2008...
Shirley Wu liked this
See the second to last paragraph.
- Sol Lederman
Science21: Supply and Demand, Booms and Busts - http://scienceblogs.com/princip...
Deepak Singh, John Dupuis, Michael Nielsen and Cameron Neylon liked this
Blog post connecting David Kaiser's and Eric Weinstein's talks to the recent article suggesting an over-supply of scientists.
- Chad Orzel
Science21: The Journal of Stuff I Like - http://scienceblogs.com/princip...
Michael Nielsen, Victor / Mendeley Team and Richard Akerman liked this
Blog post on a dinner conversation with Garrett Lisi and the Mendeley presentation
- Chad Orzel
following the meme back futher a similar idea came from Neil Saunders and there was a discussion of the quality issues that come up here: http://blog.openwetware.org/science... and originally here http://nsaunders.wordpress.com/2008...
- Cameron Neylon
Science21 Highlights: Open Access and Public Accessibility - http://scienceblogs.com/princip...
Blog post on John Willinsky's talk
- Chad Orzel
Science21 Highlights: Peer to Patent and Government 2.0 - http://scienceblogs.com/princip...
Blog post on Beth Noveck's talk
- Chad Orzel
Just started the ScienceOnline09 room on FF - http://beta.friendfeed.com/rooms...
Proof from a NASA website that there's water on Mars - http://apod.nasa.gov/apod...
Enro liked this
Please keep this related to the Science 21 workshop. Thanks.
- Michael Nielsen
Ok, will do.
- Sol Lederman
I couldn't download the wmv for Collins - is the link broken?
I've asked the IT guy already on Saturday to check the link, but no reply yet. Will let you know if I hear from him.
- Sabine Hossenfelder
Fixed, try again. Make sure to reload the page.
- Sabine Hossenfelder
Thanks
- Christina Pikas
A Longitudinal Study of Blogging Traffic - http://scienceblogs.com/princip...
Michael Nielsen liked this
Somebody asked about the distribution of traffic among topics during Monday's panel discussion. Here are some numbers.
- Chad Orzel
Science in the 21st Century reading list - http://jdupuis.blogspot.com/2008...
Michael Nielsen, Jill O'Neill, Richard Akerman and Cameron Neylon liked this
Compilation of books mentioned at the conference and from the earlier FF thread
- John Dupuis
Thanks John. This is a long list, most of the books are new to me. I started by ordering "Here Comes Everybody". Any plans to amazonize or this? Or start a shelfari group? http://www.shelfari.com/
- Martin Fenner
If we're getting into the library space I highly recommend the CLIR No Brief Candle report http://www.clir.org/pubs...
- Richard Akerman
I put this in LibraryThing with touchstones http://www.librarything.com/talktop... - the process of which almost paralyzed my Mac Firefox 3 with endless beachball spinning - whatever processing LT is doing doesn't seem to like long lists of touchstones in Firefox - works much better in Safari
- Richard Akerman
The touchstone behavior is pretty weird in terms of loading this many entries - I don't know how many you'll see - it doesn't seem to be able to load them all at once - I even split it into two postings and it didn't make any difference. UPDATE: It seems that The Cathedral & the Bazaar: Musings on Linux and Open Source by an Accidental Revolutionary by Eric S. Raymond was breaking it - maybe the & symbol is a stop symbol.
- Richard Akerman
Ideas about future conferences like this?
carolh, Sabine Hossenfelder, Cameron Neylon and 2 other people liked this
I thought it would be good to open up a general thread for ideas for the future.
- Jen Dodd
hold one in Ottawa so I can go to it? :)
- Richard Akerman
I really like the format - long talks, with plenty of time for recuperating and talking in between. For me this has been an intense week, but not utterly overwhelming as week-long conferences often are.
- Jen Dodd
I've also gotten more sleep here than in the previous couple of weeks, but that's what life with an infant will get you...
- Chad Orzel
+1 on the format --- really like the breaks for conversation
- Greg Wilson
it's been great following by FF - thanks!
- Christina Pikas
+1 Christina -- I have really enjoyed the FF coverage, many thanks to all the busy fingers liveblogging!
- Bill Hooker
+1 FriendFeed coverage
- Richard Akerman
Those who attended: did you prefer the longer duration of the conference to the Friday-Sunday format? In terms of new information, networking, personal exhaustion, etc.
- Martin Fenner
Martin - It's certainly more exhausting. On the other hand, I got to meet and talk properly to far more people this way than I would in a 2-3 day format.
- Michael Nielsen
It would depend on the topic. This conference was wide ranging, a smaller focused meeting may work, but I have an idea about that, which I'll post in the next couple of days.
- Paul Guinnessy
Another thought for a possible next meeting is to give it a different focus. E.g. science and politics. Other suggestions welcome. Should the idea catch on, one could have a different focus each year.
- Sabine Hossenfelder
I personally don't like academic events on weekends. I think people have a right to a private life.
- Sabine Hossenfelder
The duration didn't seem that excessive to me, but then the one conference I usually attend generally runs Tuesday-Saturday, so this wasn't too different. I have thoughts on future topics, but the baby is crying. More later.
- Chad Orzel
I agree with Sabine. Weekend conferences and other work commitments wreck family life. You don't see your children much in the week because of work, what's the point of having them?! Working at home for a few hours over a weekend around domestic or other private commitments is one thing, being away yet again for the whole weekend is another. I wish companies and organisations would "get" this.
- Maxine
I think there is a real potential issue here though as Eva points out - for many people this wouldn't pass as work - whereas for others it probably doesn't pass as 'play' or a hobby. I liked the format and the timeframe - and I did find it exhausting but in a good and intense way. The breaks to talk and discuss were very important I think.
- Cameron Neylon
One aspect that I've been pondering, is whether the next conference should be in two locations. e.g. Somewhere in the North Americas and simultaneously, another conference held in Europe or Asia, using a similar setup to what we've seen at the Perimeter Institute. Eric's discussion on the impact of creating those live web cams so that a company could more closely tie two groups together got me thinking that this might be a way to broaden the discussions and get input from Asia and the Middle East.
- Paul Guinnessy
+1 on the several locations idea.
- Martin Fenner
If its technically feasible it would be great - issue with when you have drinkies though - given the time difference. But with a scattering of big screens and webcams hooked up to Skype or similar you might even be able to overcome the issues with the social parts being divided geographically
- Cameron Neylon
The multiple locations idea is interesting-- as Steve Fuller's talk showed, it's almost possible to make that work. It would lose one of the nicest aspects of an in-person conference, though, namely the informal in-person interactions outside of the talks.
- Chad Orzel
Topic-wise, I think there are a few issues that didn't really get covered that might be worth discussion-- intellectual property issues and the like are the main thing that come to mind. I liked the breadth of the issues discussed at this meeting, though, and wouldn't want to lose that in choosing a more specific topic. Also, I think that a lot of the projects discussed at the meeting are still in early stages, and some follow-up would be nice, to see how the landscape evolves.
- Chad Orzel
Oh, and one final comment (I don't mean to Al Haig the whole topic, really I don't: Next year, have it a week earlier, so classes aren't in session, and I don't have to find somebody to cover lectures for me...
- Chad Orzel
I would also be interested to have some talks from the librarians - there were many of them at the conference, but I don't think we had a talk from any of them.
- Jen Dodd
+1 on several locations. Mark Tovey, Michael Nielsen, and I have been discussing how having more than one location with a joint FF room for communication might lead to really interesting cross-fertilisation; having a virtual window to the other conference as well would be even better. The talks wouldn't necessarily all have to be shared - having different talks in each location would increase the richness of the interaction between the two locations, especially if the talks are recorded PIRSA-style.
- Jen Dodd
A meeting at which librarians tend to hold forth on related matters is ASIST annual. Next one coming up in October.
- carolh
Jen - Yeah, I agree it would have been good to have some talks from librarians.
- Michael Nielsen
*pokes up head* Did somebody say "librarian"? :)
- D0r0th34
We should have at least hijacked one or two of the sessions!
- John Dupuis
I thought we had a presentation from a librarian-- isn't that what Gerry does?
- Chad Orzel
Information professionals: Please spread the word about writing contest
If you're an information science professional, if you play one on TV, or if you have friends, students, or colleagues in the field, I'd appreciate it if you'd tell them about the writing contest in my Federated Search blog at this URL: http://federatedsearchblog.com/2008... The winner gets a trip to the 2009 Computers In Libraries conference from anywhere in the world plus they get to present their winning essay.
- Sol Lederman
Submit your entries for the third Science Blogging Anthology - http://scienceblogs.com/clock...
"Books in this space that you'd recommend?"
Valentina*, Sabine Hossenfelder, John Dupuis and 2 other people liked this
sixty days and counting, stanley kim robinson
- Paul Guinnessy
Vernor Vinge's Rainbows End?
- Richard Akerman
Here Comes Everybody by Clay Shirky
- Jen Dodd
Standage: The Victorian Internet
- Greg Wilson
+1 Here Comes Everybody
- Richard Akerman
"Wealth of Networks" by Yochai Benkler
- Deepak Singh
+1 Rainbows End
- Jen Dodd
+1 Wealth of Networks
- Hilary
"Here Comes Everybody" by Clay Shirky; anything by Lawrence Lessig; "Wikinomics" by Tapscott and Williams (interesting, but worth skimming some bits), "Crowdsourcing" by Jeff Howe is pretty good, from the journalist who coined the term (Google for the author's website, where it's available in draft); I'm looking forward to Tara Hunt's book about Whuffie, to be released shortly; +1 on the Vinge; +1 on the Benkler; +1 on the Tovey :-).
- Michael Nielsen
Willinsky, _The Access Principle_
- D0r0th34
Everything is Miscellaneous by David Weinberger and +1 to Here Comes Everybody
- John Dupuis
The Future of Reputation by Daniel Solove and The Big Switch by Nicholas Carr are both good news/bad news books that are worth reading
- John Dupuis
+1 big switch
- Deepak Singh
Community by Peter Block
- Jen Dodd
Ambient Findability by Peter Morville
- John Dupuis
Dreaming in Code by Scott Rosenberg is a terrific book about how hard it is to build good programs, building on Greg Wilson's talk.
- John Dupuis
Mancur Olson's 1965 book "The Logic of Collective Action" describes a class of economic problems that (from a modern perspective) includes the question "Why don't scientists adopt web 2.0?" It's fascinating, and well worth taking a look at.
- Michael Nielsen
Christine Borgman, "Scholarship in the Digital Age", has an enormous amount of useful detailed information.
- Michael Nielsen
+1 Scholarship in the Digital Age, it is very comprehensive on the more political and social aspects, but it doesn't cover the technology aspect much.
- Richard Akerman
The Cathedral & the Bazaar: Musings on Linux and Open Source by an Accidental Revolutionary By Eric S. Raymond
- Sol Lederman
Summary of the Summary - http://backreaction.blogspot.com/2008...
Maxine, Victor / Mendeley Team, John Dupuis and Michael Nielsen liked this
final discussion
Sabine Hossenfelder, Deepak Singh, Mark Tovey and Jen Dodd liked this
M: instead of considering a triangle of science, society and technology, suggests its a two way link between science and society
- Paul Guinnessy
Question: What is the most striking thing that you've learnt in the last week?
- Paul Guinnessy
Question 2: How will Science21 impact your career or professional life?
- Paul Guinnessy
Chad: Hadn't thought about open access, its not about access to papers, its about access to what the papers say that's the problem. John Moslinky talked about these tools in open access journals that allows you to find related articles that can explain topics, language in the papers
- Paul Guinnessy
Chad: Impact of John Willinsky's talk about Public Knowledge project making papers accessible to people
- Cameron Neylon
Chad: hadn't thought about the open notebook idea, and its sounds like an attractive idea, a very practical way to stay in touch with the lab while out of the office. Previously I had never thought about it, now keen to investigate.
- Paul Guinnessy
feedback from the floor: what about people stealing or reusing your work? Chad, not really a problem in his field
- Paul Guinnessy
more of an education problem that a technology problem. That's the problem. (Wilson)
- Paul Guinnessy
Cameron: "The primary person you are making access to is your own" Security is hard, the rest of the tools are not, so if it makes your life easier, I think people will move towards this model faster.
- Paul Guinnessy
David: Surprised by looking back at his experience in physics, 10 years ago met a person who posted to arxiv after communicating via email for months. Couldn't complete papers until he had flown and met in person. Is there some way the dense communication that you have in person we replicated through technology? David is not sure. David was shocked that Cameron was advising a student miles away from where he's based?
- Paul Guinnessy
Wilson: Is this a generation thing?
- Paul Guinnessy
Cameron: there is still some tangible experience you get in person, but perhaps a mixture of all these tools (blogs, email, etc..) mixed together could replace this experience.
- Paul Guinnessy
Wilson: 30 years ago it would rude to answer a phone at dinner. Now technology has changed the rules because we fragment our time differently that in the past.
- Paul Guinnessy
M mentions the friend feed
- Paul Guinnessy
Cameron: depends on what your expectation are. 2nd life your expectations is low because its crude, but the ability to see where people are looking etc.. can be valuable, even if its really just a bunch of text commands
- Paul Guinnessy
Garrett et al's paper is http://jcmc.indiana.edu/vol13...
- Greg Wilson
J: emailing tex files back and forth eventually becomes unproductive (see his talk). Wiki and IM is better. Took one away, it doesn't work, but synergy is good between the two.
- Paul Guinnessy
Michael gives examples of Tapscott and Williams leaving Skype on all day; "Don, are you there?"
- Mark Tovey
David: timescales are important.
- Paul Guinnessy
IM is very low latency but also low bandwidth
- Mark Tovey
Cameron: different media have different timeframes. e.g. C is a day late on a google doc paper, reason is because he hasn't been nagged by email or phone.
- Paul Guinnessy
Wilson: grabbed the third floor, and it was several weeks before the employees realized that there was a new group.
- Mark Tovey
Wilson: one of his start ups is on two floors which cut commuication by 90%. They installed 24/7 webcams in all the coffee room. Eventually all the staff had all their meetings in this room. When they expanded again it took several weeks before people realized that the staff had expanded to another floor because it just looked like another room on the system. Wilson is very keen to see this in a lab.
- Paul Guinnessy
Wilson: potential experiment -- sheet of virtual glass between two labs
- Mark Tovey
Greg - what was the company?
- Jen Dodd
David: Need to encourage outreach to the public. Previously his had been in old media, now he may consider new media.
- Paul Guinnessy
I would enjoy reading David's blog!
- Jen Dodd
garrent: pleased that there was interaction between groups. Thought that journals were dinosaurs, but after seeing Timo's Nature talk, realized that they were trying to facilitate communication between scientists.
- Paul Guinnessy
Harry's blog would be interesting as well!
- Cameron Neylon
garrent: what is science socially? Never thought of science as a social construct before.
- Paul Guinnessy
garrent: pleased at the interactions outside of conferences
- Paul Guinnessy
+1 on Harry's blog - although I could imagine it might sometimes be a bit too close to the bone for physicists to hear what they're really like :)
- Jen Dodd
T: the one thing that was missing what impact from people outside science. It would be nice to see how people use tools etc.. in their field and want lessons we can learn with that.
- Paul Guinnessy
Wilson says it might be useful to invite the person who created Toronto's freedom of information act that means Wilson can't use gmail to contact students. It would apply some legal framework to the privacy concerns connected to scientific data, research, and the spread of knowledge.
- Paul Guinnessy
s/Toronto/Ontario/g
- Greg Wilson
Wilson: US navy and marine corp are doing good stuff on learning stuff quickly, might learn from that experience.
- Paul Guinnessy
Sabine: this workshop was an experiment and I'm glad that there was interactions between the participants considering their varied background
- Paul Guinnessy
I suggest concentrating on the audio. If that can be cleaned up then that's good enough. You can always add photos to the audio cues to get a more visual representation.
- Paul Guinnessy
Agreeing with Paul...
- Michael Nielsen
What should the next administration do to improve crowdsourcing in science policy
Greg Wilson's minutes from the discussion: http://www.science21stcentury.org/stuff...
- Chad Orzel
I don't think it should be restricted to crowdsourcing --- lots of other interesting ways to apply things discussed at this conference to public policy problems.
- Greg Wilson
Cameron Neylon: How I learned to stop worrying and love my blog - http://www.slideshare.net/Cameron...
Mark Tovey, carolh, Victor / Mendeley Team and Michael Nielsen liked this
Cameron's slides are up at this link: http://www.slideshare.net/Cameron...
- Jen Dodd
Nice hand waving on slide 2
- Chad Orzel
2. "What I'm doing most people find a little bit scary"
- Jen Dodd
3. Made up numbers suggesting we could save circa one billion dollars a year if people didn't have to repeat each other's mistakes.
- Jen Dodd
Imaginary numbers: $100 billion, 25% on research-- save 1 month by knowing something somebody else knows, save millions over whole system
- Chad Orzel
4. UK govt considered (and abandoned) idea of assessing grants on ecomonic returns.
- Jen Dodd
8. Limited intersections between different groups who are ostensibly "collaborating" - develop ideas and get funding together, do the rest separately.
- Jen Dodd
10. Ability of web 2.0 to improve science depends on openness.
- Jen Dodd
11. Lab book: http://chemtools.chem.soton.ac.uk/project...
- Jen Dodd
Cameron's lab book: http://chemtools.chem.soton.ac.uk/project...
- Chad Orzel
UsefulChem record: http://usefulchem.wikispaces.com/exp207
- Chad Orzel
16. Use of GoogleReader to follow and comment on graduate student's lab progress.
- Jen Dodd
17. Example of crowdsourcing research help on FF: http://friendfeed.com/e...
- Jen Dodd
20. So far, Pawel (person who offered assistance via FF) will get authorship on any papers to come out; none so far.
- Jen Dodd
22. Change of topic to the fears associated with doing science openly.
- Jen Dodd
22. Blurring of line between public and private.
- Jen Dodd
23. What is the published, peer-reviewed literature good for? Results fixed in time - a full record that supports a claim (or claims), available for detailed examination and critique.
- Jen Dodd
Eva - this is equally true in physics.
- Michael Nielsen
25. Papers are good for interpretation, but they don't do a good job of giving information about how the analysis was done.
- Jen Dodd
The question of scooping is highly community dependent-- there are subfields and groups who really worry about scooping, but there are other areas where things are much more collegial.
- Chad Orzel
"Scientists do not do work."
- Greg Wilson
29. Automatic blogging by machines.
- Jen Dodd
Re: collegiality: see, for example: http://scienceblogs.com/princip... and http://scienceblogs.com/princip...
- Chad Orzel
Interesting remark: "I do not deposit into Soton's IR" Too much extra work.
- carolh
31. Criteria for making software for scientists.
- Jen Dodd
Cameron's post on killer apps: http://blog.openwetware.org/science...
- Chad Orzel
31. Cf blog post: http://blog.openwetware.org/science...
- Jen Dodd
Pity the poor repository-rat! ALMS! ALMS FOR THE POOR!
- D0r0th34
34. "Data belongs in the public domain. We shouldn't be talking about licensing data."
- Jen Dodd
Wilbanks quote: http://network.nature.com/blogs...
- Chad Orzel
34. Need to make strong community norms about how to treat data, rather than legal licenses.
- Jen Dodd
36. The seven deadly sins in science - we need to consider how to motivate people, including through motivations of pride, etc.
- Jen Dodd
36. Story about Dutch repository that was called "The Cream of Science", convinced some top scientists to be involved, and then had strong response from Dutch scientific community.
- Jen Dodd
Some information about the Cream of Science: http://www.ercim.org/publica...
- Jen Dodd
Cream of Science: http://www.narcis.info/index...
- Jen Dodd
37. Personal story: doing open science means no longer caring about what you say to who.
- Jen Dodd
Good question session, hard to microblog.
- Jen Dodd
@Cameron, can you elaborate why you don't use the SOTON repository, the home of ePrints?
- Martin Fenner
Martin - I'll give my answer to that question: I can't imagine using an institutional repository because I can't imagine ever thinking in terms of "I need to find something from a person at institution X". The scientists I know are far more interested in the invisible college than the visible, yet the IRs assume the reverse is true. This is why arxiv succeeds, and the IRs don't.
- Michael Nielsen
In other words: a central repository (arxiv, Pubmed Central, etc.) is better than many institutional repositories because a) finding the relevant information is much easier because of centralized search and b) much less input is required from the author (assuming the journal does the paper deposition). But in Germany we have a clear push towards institutional repositories.
- Martin Fenner
And now, The Film. Cameron Does Canada :-http://pirsa.org/index...
- Graham Steel
Martin, part (b) isn't true of the arxiv, but (a) is very much true
- Michael Nielsen
Greg Wilson: Can the Web Make Scientists Brush Their Teeth?
carolh, Chad Orzel, Sabine Hossenfelder and 3 other people liked this
If mom can't, what chance does the web have
- Deepak Singh
We don't know much about how scientists use computers.
- Jen Dodd
Those who talk about it tend to be early adopter or heavy users.
- Jen Dodd
Real survey coming, but not ready yet; nor URL so as not to pollute data.
- Chad Orzel
A small minority develop "big codes for big iron".
- Jen Dodd
The majority develop for the desktop, and they don't go to scientific computing conferences.
- Jen Dodd
Claim: LHC analysis code is going to produce nothing better than random numbers.
- Jen Dodd
LHC analysis code would get failing grade in CS; Wilson thinks it will be basically random numbers
- Chad Orzel
... as an example of a general issue with reliability and reproducibility.
- Jen Dodd
Scientists don't care about stability, quality of code, as demonstrated by where we spend time. It's a fair cop.
- Chad Orzel
Microsoft report on science software: http://research.microsoft.com/towards...
- Chad Orzel
Excessive faith in heroic effort-- can meet any deadline by pushing harder
- Chad Orzel
Ford studied the effect of length of the work week on performance of knowledge workers; concluded the 40 hour week was optimal.
- Jen Dodd
JMBC Paper: http://ideas.repec.org/a...
- Chad Orzel
IBM stretch imgae: http://images.google.ca/imgres... -- love the suits.
- Chad Orzel
So why shouldn't scientists spend more time working with software engineers. The model works
- Deepak Singh
And why do scientists not respect good software engineering?
- Deepak Singh
@Deepak - do you have an example of this?
- Jen Dodd
Faintly insulting analogy between scientific computing and Third World economies
- Chad Orzel
Claim that high performance computers are not well used.
- Jen Dodd
It's not that scientists don't care about software quality. They are rewarded for research output (= papers), not quality of code, so time spent on the latter is just viewed as time that could be spent on the former. I agonise at length over how crap my code is, but if I tried to discuss it with the boss, he'd just tell me not to be silly and think about the next paper. This is the reality of trying to program in academia.
- Neil Saunders
Jen, first startup I worked at. Scientific programmers developed algo's, software engineers implemented algos. Rosetta. Other groups where software engineers are specifically hired to implement scientific code into robust platforms. Not common, but it happens and it works well. Of course, life would be easier if scientists wrote good code
- Deepak Singh
That sounds like a sensible division of labour, since it's clearly a full-time job to become either a good scientist or a good software engineer. Maybe this is what's underlying Greg's observations.
- Jen Dodd
Funny student exam answers http://www.jimmyr.com/blog...
- Sabine Hossenfelder
Provenance and workflow systems. See eg. http://twiki.ipaw.info/bin...
- Jen Dodd
I don't really disagree with him, but I don't think this problem is unique to computing. What passes for circuit design, plumbing, machining, etc. in much of experimental physics would be just as appalling to professionals in those areas.
- Chad Orzel
Greg: computer scientists should make tools that eliminate the need for scientists to "do the plumbing".
- Jen Dodd
provenance challenge wiki: http://twiki.ipaw.info/bin...
- Chad Orzel
betting on Yahoo pipes because their market is bigger http://pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/
- Paul Guinnessy
Jen ... what kind of tools? Software engineering has never been more interesting and had more interesting platforms
- Deepak Singh
Yahoo Pipes: http://pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/
- Chad Orzel
Deepak, not sure I can say for sure - did others understand that?
- Jen Dodd
Pipeline Pilot, Taverna, Rails, Django, Hadoop, etc etc etc? There's so much stuff out there. People just don't use it. Agreed, good scientific frameworks are not quite there, but there is a starting point.
- Deepak Singh
Buckheit Reproducible Research article: http://en.scientificcommons.org/72003
- Chad Orzel
@Deepak, that's probably what he was talking about - he says he thinks that existing commercial products will develop to fill this need.
- Jen Dodd
I know a few software engineers who've left academic groups because no one cared about good quality code, they just wanted things to work.
- Deepak Singh
reproducible research link: http://lcavwww.epfl.ch/reprodu...
- Chad Orzel
Jen, they've been there for a while. There are accessibility issues and programming frameworks are fairly mature. The level of computer science and higher level mathematics being used at many web companies is very advanced and they do a good job (a very good job in fact). It's an attitude and approach problem. Neil's points above are quite valid
- Deepak Singh
Using the word "knuth" as noun to mean a paper plus the code in a readable format (?)
- Jen Dodd
Advocating "literate programming" for scientists http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki...
- Chad Orzel
Deepak and Neil, I can't speak from personal knowledge, so it's interesting to hear what you think about Greg's perspective.
- Jen Dodd
Greg: Agile development practices fit scientists's needs better than traditional approaches.
- Jen Dodd
Programming contest: http://www.mathworks.com/contest...
- Chad Orzel
Software engineering as "the youngest science".
- Jen Dodd
One-term course to boost productivity 20%: http://swc.scipy.org/
- Chad Orzel
Software carpentry site will be relaunched as a wiki. Difficulty of institutional barriers to offering courses that cross areas such as this.
- carolh
Lengthy political discussion, whose start I missed while dealing with funding issue in email.
- Chad Orzel
most people that you talk to over the web are angry. sooner or later any political action stops being polite. says that ultranationalism and facism in Russia is getting worse, “Oil is to the 21st Century what slavery was to the 19th: morally repugnant, but economically indispensable” Hochschild said an interview, Bury the chains “Adam Hochschild” good book on slavery -- they (quakers) invented a lot of the terms we use in democracy today. realclimate.org has a higher ranking than icr.org
- Paul Guinnessy
can scientists prove that they didn't fake their data? Lawyers may want to know.
- Paul Guinnessy
Slides at http://www.cs.toronto.edu/~gvwils...
- Greg Wilson
Agile works well in certain situations. Matt Wood can comment extensively on that. But there needs to be some recognition of the importance of good software within an academic setting
- Deepak Singh
Leaving at 1:00 Friday
Michael Nielsen, Jen Dodd and Sabine Hossenfelder liked this
I'm heading back to the states after lunch today. I want to say that this has been a great conference. I've really enjoyed the experience and I've learned a tremendous amount. Thank you, everyone, for your great presentations, your great ideas, your enthusiasm for making a difference and your great friendliness. Sabine -- you did an outstanding job in the organization. If any of you are ever in Santa Fe, look me up.
- Sol Lederman
I share the view that this has been a quite beneficial meeting, and wish to thank all who helped in its organization. Sorry I cannot stay through the wrap-up.
- carolh
Thanks for coming and making this event such an interesting and stimulating meeting!
- Sabine Hossenfelder
Other ways to read this feed:
