What I found more interesting than Pachter's analysis of the specific failings of the Barzel-Barabási paper is the more general implications for our scientific process. I have two parallel trains of thought:
1) We all know that we have scientific "celebrities" and that their work is often over-represented in high-quality journals (while dissenting viewpoints are often suppressed). There is nothing wrong with critizing the work of the celebrity du jour (or in this case, maybe, du décennie), but framing is everything and you will find more success in your scientific career with constructive and respectful criticism without resorting to ad hominem attacks such as "the emperor has no clothes". No one benefits from a bloody cage match.
2) Network science (like many interdisciplinary fields) has problems because many of its practitioners lack extensive knowledge of the systems, experimental challenges and core research methodologies of the fields or contexts to which they apply their developments. Success in such interdisciplinary fields is often incentivized and measured in a very narrow way and not associated with the primary goal of science -- useful and meaningful advances in our collective body of knowledge. You want to be at the top of your field, but presumably (or hopefully) you have more noble aspirations -- you want your work to have real meaning. But this lofty goal is challenged by the rapidly growing body of scientific work and the fracturing of science into siloed sub-fields. For example, finding the right set of peer reviewers for an interdisciplinary submission becomes increasingly challenging. Consequently, mistakes will be made, missed in the peer review process, and published. Dissenting opinions and followup work need to be given equal representation.
I'd amend this to "tell me about an academic publication that you've been a major contributing author". Depending on the field and circumstances first author doesn't mean the same thing.
The basic technology for this has been around for years (e.g., the logitech digipen), though I think this latest iteration is the first to add pressure sensitivity. I've always wanted one of these (back when I was getting my physics PhD, I would have killed for this), but everything out there to date seems to be the same rehashed product that is doomed to be abandoned shortly after its release. Here's to hoping wacom does it right.
I suppose it's easy to assert that a site is immune to ES when it's in its infancy-- the argument made here is that HN's niche hardcore basis protects it, but the same argument could have been made for reddit 5 years ago, a case which they curiously use as a token example of ES. I think the takeaway here is that only intentional and deliberate measures to protect against homogenization of a community will work -- and these are often less egalitarian by design.
Agreed. Those deliberate measures are perfectly executed by both HN and Quora members. They don't let their content be crowd/outsourced totally, they moderate it. And that's what makes HN and Quora stay great.
Sorry, so the argument is: other research costs are expensive in some fields, thereby high spending is prestigious, thereby access to publications ought to be expensive so that fields that lack more direct expenses can seem comparable ? This doesn't seem to make sense, because fields where direct research expenses are high also require access to publications. Maybe I'm missing your point? If so, please clarify.
You're right, it doesn't make sense, but I find it entirely plausible. Welcome to academia; nobody said it was supposed to make sense (especially when it comes to the financial aspects of the gig). Ask me sometime about how my university calculates overhead costs & indirect percentages, let alone how it allocates and charges for floor space- the words "byzantine" and "Machiavellian" come to mind.
Any scientist will tell you that the most important person in their department- by far- is their finance person. They're the ones that know your university's financial system inside and out, and so will be able to help you keep your money from going straight up the university's nose (as it were). A good finance person will also know how, on a per-agency-basis, to structure a grant's budget so that you get to keep as much money as possible as freely-usable as possible (E.g., there are things that the NSF will let you do with certain kinds of grant money that the NIH won't, and vice versa, and a good finance person knows what they are).
