Arguments For Open Science
Some recent controversies around scientific publications illustrate the potential benefits of open science.
- Open access publication of research reports and data allow for more rigorous peer review
An article published by a team of NASA astrobiologists in 2010 in Science reported a new bacterium known as GFAJ-1 that was purported to metabolize arsenic (unlike any previously known species of lifeform). This finding, along with NASA's claim that the paper "will impact the search for evidence of extraterrestrial life", was roundly criticized within the scientific community. Much of the scientific commentary and critique around this issue took place in public forums, most notably on Twitter, where hundreds of scientists and non-scientists created a hashtag community around the hashtag #arseniclife. University of British Columbia astrobiologist Rosie Redfield, one of the most vocal critics of the NASA team's research, also submitted a draft of a research report of a study that she and colleagues conducted which contradicted the NASA team's findings in arXiv, an open research repository, and called for peer review of both their research and the NASA team's original paper on her lab's research blog.
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Famous quotes containing the words arguments, open and/or science:
“Through Plato Aristotle came to believe in God, but Plato never attempted to prove His reality. Aristotle had to do so. Plato contemplated Him; Aristotle produced arguments to demonstrate Him. Plato never defined Him, but Aristotle thought God through logically and concluded with entire satisfaction to himself that He was the Unmoved Mover.”
—Edith Hamilton (1867–1963)
“A man’s most open actions have a secret side to them.”
—Joseph Conrad (1857–1924)
“Nor has science sufficient humanity, so long as the naturalist overlooks the wonderful congruity which subsists between man and the world; of which he is lord, not because he is the most subtile inhabitant, but because he is its head and heart, and finds something of himself in every great and small thing, in every mountain stratum, in every new law of color, fact of astronomy, or atmospheric influence which observation or analysis lay open.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)