RE: Science in Anarchy! Participate in the world's first science experiment on steemit and get paid!
Unfortunately, the current state of science is disappointing. It has become a corporate welfare system, where the primary goal is to take knowledge and resources from the public domain. They do science that we are paying for, then they keep the raw data under wraps only to charge a fee to access it.
I find this exaggerated. Take fundamental research. All results are public, most publications are written in freely available journals and most technologies developed to build the experiments are not patented (and there is thus a free transfer of knowledge to the society).
Although I can admit that what you say is true in some fields, you should not generalize this in this way, where you almost say that scientists form like a sect, keeping knowledge for themselves.
PS: I like your idea of a scientific experiment to be run on steemit, but I strongly disagree with the above paragraph.
@lemouth
I think it depends on the field and the applicability to immediate problems. Here is the deal.
You are an educator, you have direct access to anything published immediately because the school you work for is covering the costs.
However even you cannot deny that publish or perish is a real problem for serious researchers.
The problem here is not the researchers but the companies involved.
Research such as particle physics is published immediately and widely and publicly.
But things with immediate practicality are only published in locked down journals that frankly you need to pay a fortune to access. This is not a problem at all if the company benefiting from licensing the data and resulting tech is also shouldering the cost.
The problem arises when tax dollars fund research that is not made wholly public. When tax payer paid research results in raw data you cannot access and when tax dollars are used to develop technologies that are then locked down for 20 years or more under intellectual property laws.
That is theft from the public domain and it's not even the researchers themselves that are the problem. If this was going to two guys in a garage it wouldn't be as bad. But the reality is much different. These are multimillion dollar companies getting these dollars and using them to fund the development of technology that is subsequently unavailable unless we pay for the privilege to use it.
That is what I am speaking to. Not career researchers, but corporate theft from the public domain.
If you are using public dollars to do research the public should own the results of that research. That's really all I'm saying.
This Science in Anarchy proposal is an alternative method of research though and if it works out it may well revolutionize how we do these kinds of things. :)
Hope something like that is on my tombstone anyways.
All scientific research should be available free of charge to anyone who wants it. Openness and sharing of information is the basis of science and scientific progress. The current situation is ridiculous and unsustainable.
I agree. Note that no one is saying the opposite!
What I was saying is that the comment of @williambanks was not applicable to all research fields. In our case, everything is freely accessible and not patented for a long time.
Any research done by DARPA is not publicly available
I agree, it depends on the field and what you say for corporate companies is also true. But reading again the paragraph I was chocked with, this is not what was mentioned in there. This paragraph sounds very general and you seem to say it applies to all branches of science.
Now, I strongly believe that every field should develop free journals (if particle physics can do it, why can't everybody do it?) and release data to public. Especially if the initial money comes from taxes. I would like just to point out that the arxiv that was developed initially for physics (I think) is now more and more spread within other fields. In this way, publications are available even if published in costly journals (that should be boycotted IMO).
Concerning the 'publish or perish', in my field, this is less and less true in Europe. Quality matters more and more over quantity. Which is a good thing. But again, particle physics may be an exception...
@lemouth I can reword it if you really feel it's too generalized.
Do keep in mind though that particle physics has a much richer history of disclosure than the so called "applied sciences". Example what would the world wide web be without CERN?
That's true. We have always at least two experiments, everything is public, nothing is kept secret, etc... Btw, I wrote on the benefits of the CERN LHC to the society a couple of weeks ago here, in the case you are interested.
Coming back to the point, I would be grateful if you could slightly modify this paragraph and define exactly which kind of research you are focusing on :) Thanks in advance!
@lemouth
Ok I fixed it.
Also upvoted your awesome post on CERN.
You particle physicists really do need to check up on that 5th force as soon as possible and you should check to see if there is a 6th force too. I'm probably insane, but I do expect one to come to light soonish and when it does it will do a better job of explaining the delayed choice quantum eraser experiment and a bunch of other appearantly retro-causal phenomenon. The answer is, I hope also going to explain the error correcting codes that S James Gates found in SUSY a few years back. If so I'd like to propose you call it the Gates force. Just sayin :D
I have to travel today. I will try to write a detailed article on this fifth force. For the moment, I think that it is too early to claim anything :)
This is more and more true in Asia, unfortunately....