Agreed. - Walter Jessen via Alert Thingy

ALA Kuhn's "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions" - Todd Harris via twhirl

I've been wondering that for years. It's actually probably more prevalent in academia. - Deepak Singh

and that's ok - success should not be defined as "practiced by the majority" - Jean-Claude Bradley

hard to talk on "science" in general, there are scientific fields and niches and you can define your niche by this adopter community as a reference point - Attila Csordas

I'd say it's not changing at all -- has barely even responded to the web. To me, that's what the biogang/open (notebook) science collective (BONSC?) is all about: we're out to change all that. - Bill Hooker

my next job decides whether I am able to find the niche of my taste or not in which I am not an early adopter anymore because everyone else is along those lines - Attila Csordas

What surprises me is that scientists inherently should be curious folks. Somethings gone wrong somewhere. It's not just technology, it's how you approach science and how aware you are of the ways of doing science. I'd argue that things aren't as bad as it sounds, but e.g. in structure prediction/molecular simulation, not too much has changed in the past decade (well not as much as I would like) - Deepak Singh

instead of the AAAS let's establish the WWWS :) - Attila Csordas

My feeling is that it's a generational change. Once the people who do science the "new way" gain more and more positions of influence, there will be a cooperative effect. As it is, there seems to be a lot of talk and a general agreement of the direction to head, but not as much movement among the majority of scientists as I'd personally like to see. - Jason Winget

the question is whether the new generation needs new institutions or the deinstitutionalized web collaboration forms will be enough to bear the burden of a radical change - Attila Csordas

Science has always been like this. If you check papers from basic science journals (ie phylogenetics journals) you will see people working with the same methods, software, etc of 20 years ago, even though new things are available for quite some time. I think it takes a little bit of time for the new guard to replace the old one, in a slow process. And for some people, new things are frightening. - Paulo Nuin

@Paulo: yes, but scientists should not be among those for whom the new is frightening! Or at least, so I would have thought -- but it seems I'm wrong in many cases. I never have understood this. - Bill Hooker

Me neither Bill, but that is what I feel from reading some journals. Some methodologies are quicker to be accepted than others, but overall the process is slow. And it shouldn't be. - Paulo Nuin

Don't forget, some people study science because they need to know what is out there, endangering their world. Others study what is out there that can enrich their world. ' - dK

My take here is more than just using the web. I am talking of methods and approaches to problem solving as well. Scientists often take the "if it is not broken, don't change it" approach. Like Bill I think that inherently scientists should take the, if it works, let's try and break it approach - Deepak Singh

My approach to "break the approach" is to try new programming languages, new APIs, anything that will make me think with a different perspective and angle. - Paulo Nuin

Also in science the emphasis is more on the acquisition of knowledge rather than the tools. People just go in the lab and follow protocols, to get the data out so that the "fun part" begins. Again to praise my own house, difference in bioinformatics is that you bring all new sorts of tools in, and see how they alter your knowledge generation. - Ntino

The phrase "punctuated equilibrium" comes to mind. arXiv adoption by physicists in the mid-1990s was frighteningly fast. In 1994, nobody I knew used it. In 1996, nobody I knew didn't. - Michael Nielsen

Danny Hillis has a great quote that I think is relevant to any process of social change: "There are problems that are impossible if you think about them in two-year terms --- which everyone does --- but they're easy if you think in fifty-year terms." - Michael Nielsen