Coronavirus Is What You Get When You Ignore Science
Science and scientists face crushing opposition. In addition to silent-spreading disease and a burning planet, they must take on the moneyed, the godly, the dictatorial and Mike Pence.
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Science and scientists face crushing opposition. In addition to silent-spreading disease and a burning planet, they must take on the moneyed, the godly, the dictatorial and Mike Pence.
What happened instead of us sitting down and thinking how we could spend our money in the most technologically savvy way to the benefit of science, scholars and society. A generation later, roughly US$300 billion poorer and none the wiser, it seems.
Last year, everyone in U.S. academic publishing had strong opinions about a mythical beast that all had heard about but none had actually seen: a rumored Executive Order from the White House Office of Science and Technology that would mandate immediate public availability of research results by federally-funded authors.
Self-governance of science was supposed to mean freedom of inquiry, but it also ended up serving the business model of scientific publishers while undermining the goals of science policy.
Preprint servers and journals are working overtime to keep up with a "firehose" of data.
More funders and publishers must support such work and emphasize its value to the research community.
This article argues it is irresponsible to support research but not data stewardship.
The author argues that for the humanities to successfully adopt digital technologies, they need to develop an independent open humanities discourse.
The vast majority of the discourse among the punditry and policymakers is about ensuring we have the right response. Shouldn't we instead be asking a more fundamental question: How did this happen in the first place?
The virus doesn’t follow the news and doesn’t care about Twitter. This article proposes that reporting should distinguish between at least three levels of information reliability.
Opinion piece argues that Plan S deals have streamlined open access provision in the global North while exacerbating existing inequalities in scholarly publishing, by establishing and entrenching a two-tier system of scholarly publishing based on access to funds.
John Malloy shares his experiences of risking debt to travel - and discusses what to do about it.
Up-to-the-minute reports and statistics can unintentionally distort the facts.
Rows over eugenics reveal how difficult it is to 'decouple' controversial concepts in our heads.
DNA testing companies are starting to profit from selling our data on to big pharma. Perhaps they should be paying us, says science writer Laura Spinney.
Science was a place I ultimately left, not so much because I wanted to, but because I had to.
UKRI and other funders must prevent good intentions on open access from undermining good science, says Lee Cronin.
Standard reports paint a much rosier picture of the research landscape than may be warranted. In this analysis, the first hypothesis of standard articles reported was supported by the data 96% of the time, while that rate was only 44% in registered reports.
A survey of New Zealand scientists found that recipients of a randomized funding program favored random allocations of some kinds of grant money.
Proposals to mandate open access monographs from 2024 will make it harder to publish and will limit career chances, says professor
Reversing the relationship between authors and publishers would ease perverse incentives that impede progress, say Hilal Lashuel and Benjamin Stecher
These are Martin Paul Eve's notes on The UKRI Open Access Review Consultation Document.
When staff go on strike in the UK this month, they will be battling not just for the future of higher education but for our economy and culture, says Guardian columnist Owen Jones.
His original submission was rejected as being "too narrow" - but later authors who presented the same idea as a new technology rather than as a scientific finding have been hailed as inventors of optogenetics.
Large investments are needed to make research data open and accessible but tackling global problems depends on it, says Paul Ayris
People who do too much service can take longer to advance in their careers, are often unhappy with how service is distributed in the department and are more likely to burn out or leave the academy, write Rachel McLaren and Anthony Ocampo, who offer tips for avoiding that.
A mean and aggressive research working culture threatens the public's respect for scientists and their expertise, says Gail Cardew.
Champions of traditional journal publishers are often unwilling to acknowledge how slow and ineffective correction in science can be.