You might have seen that the UK government has released its Select Committee’s report on peer review in science. The chair of the committee, Andrew Miller MP, says that the “general oversight of research integrity in the UK [is] unsatisfactory and complacent.” Note that he doesn’t say that the research is unsatisfactory–simply the oversight. I…
If you’re into mass sequencing, the $1000 genome and all that jazz, you’ve probably already seen the paper in today’s Nature from the Rothberg group at Life Technologies, on the Ion Torrent sequencing technology. There’s a rather scathing take-down of the paper (not the technology itself, mind) by Daniel MacArthur over on his Wired blog.…
Everybody’s at it. This time, it’s the turn of the venerable Company of Biologists—a Cambridge-based “non-profit organization whose objectives are the advancement and promotion of research in, and the study of, all branches of biology”. They publish a number of well-respected titles, including Development, Journal of Experimental Biology and one of my all-time favourites, the…
There’s an interesting article just out in Issues in Science & Technology Librarianship, which “publishes substantive content of interest to science and technology librarians.” Written by John Carey, head librarian at Hunter College, City University of New York, the article examines the concept of “invisible colleges“: mechanisms that promote dissemination of knowledge and fuel the…
Following on from my post yesterday about the ongoing UK House of Commons Select Committee on Science and Technology peer review enquiry, the oral session that Faculty of 1000 (F1000) took part in focussed on a long and interesting discussion about splitting up the review process into two constituent parts as the Public Library of…
The UK House of Commons Select Committee on Science and Technology launched an enquiry on peer review earlier this year, and invited Faculty of 1000 (F1000) to take part. The real rationale for holding this enquiry is still somewhat of a mystery to many of us who were invited to present but it appears to…
Via a tweet from Chris Surridge (Chief Editor and Associate Publisher, Nature Protocols) I found Richard Poynder‘s potted history of PLoS ONE. Fair warning though: that link goes to a short teaser; the full, 42-page analysis is available as a PDF. So no, I haven’t read it all.
This week’s news includes the surprising new role of the public sector in drug development, the conclusion of a misconduct case, more residual effects of Chernobyl, the new science gender gap, a second attempt at a non-peer-reviewed journal, and the remarkable re-evolution of frog’s teeth.
My Culture Friday article on the Blackawton Bees paper attracted a fair amount of interest, and some comments. Such as
Perhaps the most distinctive and powerful thing about Science is its tendency, or rather proclivity to ask searching, even uncomfortable questions. And unlike belief systems, or ideological and political and movements, or pseudoscience, it asks those questions of itself. There’s been a fair bit of that going on recently.
