The conversation took place over Twitter (H/T SciTechDaily).  While many conversations have no doubt taken place via the all-too-brief service, American politicians have typically opted to use the service for broadcasts rather than discussion.  U.S. government agencies use it as another way of communicating news and press releases.  U.S. polticians appear to prefer using the service to link to statements and other press documents, and/or broadcast their immediate thoughts, often derailing the careful conditioning of their communications staff.  Others are masquerading as streams from the politicians, when the tweets are posted by staffers.

Few U.S. politicians seem to engage in a back and forth like the one Lord Drayson did.  It’s not clear to me whether he is typical of Cabinet Ministers or other British politicians in this.  I’d like to think so, because finding sniping on Twitter is all too easy.  Twitter is proving of value in following breaking events, like the current situation in Iran.  Whether it succeeds in other forms of political engagement will depend as much on those tweeting as those reading them.

At a minimum the publisher Bentham is guilty of allowing journals to assert peer review when none had taken place.  The scamming conclusion is reasonable, given the reports.  I’m not in agreement that open access journals are necessarily more suspect of putting out supposedly peer-reviewed articles that weren’t so reviewed.  Yes, they do charge more fees than traditional journals (who could be scamming authors for photo and chart fees, amongst other things), but an open access journal is not more likely to skimp on peer review than any other journal.

What bothers me is that it has to take generating obviously lousy articles to ferret out derelict peer review.  Given the volume of scientific publishing, there’s an enormous amount of implicit trust in the processes behind these articles that people will continue to exploit.  I wish I had even the germ of a possible solution here.

While the science behind some of this design and thinking is new, it’s important to note that this is a more explicit treatment of the kind of behavior shaping that law and policy do all the time – limiting choice or designing systems to privilege particular outcomes or products.  What makes things different now is a greater ability to design things in advance with some notion of how people will react.  This makes discussion and debate over these issues more important before critical decisions were made, rather than trying to revisit them later.

One small step to addressing the ignorance of failure is starting with the journal Restoration Ecology.  According to Nature, the editors of Restoration Ecology will host a regular section in their journal for reports on experiments and projects in the field that did not meet expectations.  Understanding the baggage attached to the work failure, the section is titled “Set-Backs and Surprises.”  Perhaps this will catch on with other journals, especially if the setback or surprise is couple with some kind of analysis or discussion of lessons learned.  While policymakers are often focused more on the successes than what didn’t work, they do respond to lessons learned.  In that way, they may have a healthier attitude toward failure than the researchers they support.

Aside from the potential of this website as a data tool, this provides another resources for third-party examination of government data.  With the increased availability of programs to crunch, collate, sort and analyze data, going back through “old data” like that available on Data.gov could provide new insights and information we couldn’t get before.  I expect non-governmental organizations like the Sunlight Foundation to stay ahead of government efforts in this area.  What websites like Data.gov provide is additional encouragement to make more government data available and/or easy to work with.  With a multitude of data formats used today, there is no guarantee that a Census data file will be easily matched with Bureau of Labor Statistics information.  Hopefully more disclosure will help address these formatting concerns.

It’s unfortunate that the validity of gene patents is going to be tested in this fashion, as I don’t expect this validity to be shaken.  Perhaps it’s a consequence of the deep pockets necessary to participate in a patent infringement case (on either side), but I think some kind of fair use or research exemption arrived at through an infringment action is a stronger legal claim than infringement of free speech.  Since the state of genetic understanding over the last several years has typically exposed more about what we don’t know that what we do know, to restrict access to genes like BRCA1 and BRCA2 appears to cause more harm than good.

I think I understand what’s going on (for the record, I did not attend the Forum, so I don’t know the full content of the addresses).  AAAS typically provides (and sells to those who didn’t attend) copies of their Yearbooks, which are essentially conference proceedings of their Forums.  So they may be holding onto the good stuff until the next Yearbook is ready.  If this is accurate, I think it’s unfortunate.  Why not use the big addresses to sell the rest of the content from the Forum?  AAAS already puts up a lot of Forum content online (look here for last year’s material, including an address from then OSTP Director John Marburger), why not prime the pump by pushing the Chu and Holdren addresses in their entirety?  It sounds like AAAS could take a couple more steps toward embracing new media strategies.

The Obama campaign utilized social networking tools effectively during the campaign.  It’s unclear to what extent they will repeat this pattern, in part because the organizing and campaigning functions from those websites have shifted to an organization called Organizing for America.  I have no idea if this will be earth-shattering.  Many of the changes brought about by using this media have been shown through the campaign, and won’t necessarily seem new in a governing context.  An interesting side issue will be what happens if any of these social networking services handle some consumer issue badly.  Would the White House have felt the obligation to weigh in on the recent changes in Facebook’s terms of service (and the associated privacy concerns) if it had its page then?

A couple of policy points worth making here.  We currently have an acting director of the Centers for Disease Control, no doubt at least in part due to the continuing absence of a confirmed Secretary of Health and Human Services.  While that might also explain why Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano has been the highest profile government face on this issue, it’s a good argument to try and make sure the transition process can happen more smoothly and more quickly to allow for staff to take positions sooner after January 20 than is currently the case.  Secondly, it would be worthwhile to evaluate the public health response in the U.S. to this flu (especially if it gets worse), and see what changes, if any, need to be made.  $420 million in funds for pandemic flu were removed from the recent funding bills, and it would be nice to know whether that was a good call.

A final point.  It’s relatively early in the process here.  While the cases in the United States have not been as widespread, nor as lethal, as those in Mexico, we simply don’t know enough yet to be sure.  This item from the New York Times explains some of the yet unanswered questions that will help map this particular outbreak.  This post from Effect Measure helps explain what the numbers mean (and don’t mean) and what makes an epidemic, pandemic, and outbreak.