Comments on: Prometheus Class Assignment http://cstpr.colorado.edu/prometheus/?p=3942 Wed, 29 Jul 2009 22:36:51 -0600 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.9.1 hourly 1 By: Steve Hemphill http://cstpr.colorado.edu/prometheus/?p=3942&cpage=1#comment-5961 Steve Hemphill Sun, 24 Sep 2006 06:07:22 +0000 http://sciencepolicy.colorado.edu/prometheusreborn/?p=3942#comment-5961 A couple of questions for the class. Well, maybe three. 1. How much does convection compensate and adjust for vertical long wave radiation distribution? 2. How much does flora increase in marginally arable land as a function of increased atmospheric CO2? 3. What does the Gift of Fire mean in terms of reaction to dogma? A couple of questions for the class. Well, maybe three.

1. How much does convection compensate and adjust for vertical long wave radiation distribution?

2. How much does flora increase in marginally arable land as a function of increased atmospheric CO2?

3. What does the Gift of Fire mean in terms of reaction to dogma?

]]> By: JMG http://cstpr.colorado.edu/prometheus/?p=3942&cpage=1#comment-5960 JMG Sat, 23 Sep 2006 19:27:16 +0000 http://sciencepolicy.colorado.edu/prometheusreborn/?p=3942#comment-5960 IMO this evolving communications technology has tremendous potential to increase the speed of the generation cycle of scientific knowledge, particularly in rapidly advancing fields such as neuroeconomics, cognitive neuroscience and climate science. Blogs can make public, provide a historical record and speed the current but hidden informal (compared to the printed record in the form of meeting proceedings and primary refereed scientific papers) two-way communications that occur between scientists, whether in-person at local seminars, over a beer at meetings or across distance by telephone or e-mail. Commentors can perform some of the function that annonymous referees currently perform. Being public, science blogs can facilitate two-way cross-pollination between disciplines beyond the "push" one-way mode of general journals such as Science, Nature and New Scientist. Sort of like distributed computing compared to the central mainframe, this technology may enable considerably more "distributed science" away from high profile labs anchored at premier institutions. Perhaps the core literature for an area will become dynamic and real time in the form of "closed" wikis being updated by the cutting edge researchers in the area who have undergone an admission process and who gain credit from the number and durations of their contributions much like having papers cited does now. Major problems are maintaining a sufficient signal-to-noise ratio in the process to make participation worthwhile, improving the sensitivity and specificity of retrieval processes (retaining the wheat and discarding the chaff) and changing the academic reward paradigm for participating in such technology. The current process for advancing scientific knowledge has little if any reward for those providing important services such as performing anonnymous reviewers of manuscripts or grant proposals or who author synthesizing works such as systematic reviews. How this evolves in the next decade will be very interesting. IMO this evolving communications technology has tremendous potential to increase the speed of the generation cycle of scientific knowledge, particularly in rapidly advancing fields such as neuroeconomics, cognitive neuroscience and climate science. Blogs can make public, provide a historical record and speed the current but hidden informal (compared to the printed record in the form of meeting proceedings and primary refereed scientific papers) two-way communications that occur between scientists, whether in-person at local seminars, over a beer at meetings or across distance by telephone or e-mail. Commentors can perform some of the function that annonymous referees currently perform. Being public, science blogs can facilitate two-way cross-pollination between disciplines beyond the “push” one-way mode of general journals such as Science, Nature and New Scientist. Sort of like distributed computing compared to the central mainframe, this technology may enable considerably more “distributed science” away from high profile labs anchored at premier institutions. Perhaps the core literature for an area will become dynamic and real time in the form of “closed” wikis being updated by the cutting edge researchers in the area who have undergone an admission process and who gain credit from the number and durations of their contributions much like having papers cited does now. Major problems are maintaining a sufficient signal-to-noise ratio in the process to make participation worthwhile, improving the sensitivity and specificity of retrieval processes (retaining the wheat and discarding the chaff) and changing the academic reward paradigm for participating in such technology. The current process for advancing scientific knowledge has little if any reward for those providing important services such as performing anonnymous reviewers of manuscripts or grant proposals or who author synthesizing works such as systematic reviews. How this evolves in the next decade will be very interesting.

]]>