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.
Read more about this topic: Open Science
Famous quotes containing the words arguments, open and/or science:
“What can you do against the lunatic who is more intelligent than yourself, who gives your arguments a fair hearing and then simply persists in his lunacy.”
—George Orwell (1903–1950)
“Some collaboration has to take place in the mind between the woman and the man before the art of creation can be accomplished. Some marriage of opposites has to be consummated. The whole of the mind must lie wide open if we are to get the sense that the writer is communicating his experience with perfect fullness.”
—Virginia Woolf (1882–1941)
“In the new science of the twenty-first century, not physical force but spiritual force will lead the way. Mental and spiritual gifts will be more in demand than gifts of a physical nature. Extrasensory perception will take precedence over sensory perception. And in this sphere woman will again predominate.”
—Elizabeth Gould Davis (b. 1910)