Science in the Open
2009-02-11 – 21:29Otto von Bismarck might never actually have said, “Laws are like sausages, it is better not to see them being made,” but either way, the same is definitely not true of science. This discussion at realclimate.org is a great example: it starts with a description of a recent paper in Nature claiming that parts of Antarctica are warming faster than we thought, but quickly turns into a discussion of reproducibility, openness, and oh yeah, the science itself. It’s a great look at how fallible, ornery human beings arrive at provisional truth.
And see also another excellent post from Cameron Neylon pulling together various threads around the webosphere discussing the services we really want for recording science online. In discussion yesterday we coined the term “CSCS” (computer supported collaborative science) to describe the whole science 2.0/open science/reproducible research area — it’s a conscious echo of CSCW, and implies a really interesting research agenda.
6 Responses to “Science in the Open”
The term CSCS is fantastic! That’s very relevant to the work I do — do you mind if I use it too :)?
By Tennessee Leeuwenburg on Feb 12, 2009
great post as always greg! i’m going to start bookmarking with “cscs”. a journal and conference are sure to follow…
By jeff on Feb 12, 2009
Yep, love the term, all that is required now is for the scientists to admit that they need support, and perhaps to re-claim the term support to be something more valuable and important to the whole endeavor than “doing all the stuff the real people don’t want to”. But then I would say that, I’m a Support Scientist…Thanks for the links!
By Cameron Neylon on Feb 15, 2009