Tag Archives: scientific publishing
Poor journalism is making it harder for preprints
There have been quite a few statements by various scientists on Twitter who, in pointing to some preprint paper’s untenable claims, point to the manuscript’s identity as a preprint paper as well. This is not fair, as I’ve argued many times before. … Continue reading
Posted in Op-eds, Science
Tagged Ars Technica, COVID-19, journalism, misinformation, peer review, preprint papers, preprint repositories, preprints, press release, science journalism, scientific literature, scientific publishing, The Lancet
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Freeman Dyson’s PhD
The physicist, thinker and writer Freeman Dyson passed away on February 28, 2020, at the age of 96. I wrote his obituary for The Wire Science; excerpt: The 1965 Nobel Prize for the development of [quantum electrodynamics] excluded Dyson. … … Continue reading
Posted in Op-eds, Science
Tagged Cornell University, doctorate, Freeman Dyson, Institute for Advanced Study, Julian Schwinger, Nobel Prize, PhD, privilege, quantum electrodynamics, Richard Feynman, scientific publishing, scientific research, Shin'ichiro Tomonaga, Vannevar Bush
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A trumpet for Ramdev
The Print published an article entitled ‘Ramdev’s Patanjali does a ‘first’, its Sanskrit paper makes it to international journal’ on February 5, 2020. Excerpt: In a first, international science journal MDPI has published a research paper in the Sanskrit language. … Continue reading
Posted in Scicomm
Tagged Acharya Balkrishna, Ayurveda, FMCG, FSSAI, MDPI, objectivity, peer review, pseudoscience, psoriasis, science journalism, scientific publishing, The Print, Withania somnifera
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The cycle
Is it just me or does everyone see a self-fulfilling prophecy here? For a long time, and assisted ably by the ‘publish or perish’ paradigm, researchers sought to have their papers published in high-impact-factor journals – a.k.a. prestige journals – … Continue reading
Posted in Science
Tagged for-profit publishing, impact factor, Nature journal, peer review, prestige bias, prestige journals, publish or perish, scientific publishing
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The case for preprints
Daniel Mansur, the principal investigator of a lab at the Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina that studies how cells respond to viruses, had this to say about why preprints are useful in an interview to eLife: Let’s say the paper that … Continue reading
Posted in Scicomm
Tagged impact factor, paywall, preprints, research, scientific publishing
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English as the currency of science’s practice
K. VijayRaghavan, the secretary of India’s Department of Biotechnology, has written a good piece in Hindustan Times about how India must shed its “intellectual colonialism” to excel at science and tech – particularly by shedding its obsession with the English language. … Continue reading
Posted in Scicomm
Tagged English language, intellectual colonialism, K VijayRaghavan, Kendriya Vidyalaya, Nayodya Vidyalaya, scientific publishing
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The language and bullshitness of 'a nearly unreadable paper'
Earlier today, the Retraction Watch mailing list highlighted a strange paper written by a V.M. Das disputing the widely accepted fact that our body clocks are regulated by the gene-level circadian rhythm. The paper is utter bullshit. Sample its breathless … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged pseudoscience, scientific papers, scientific publishing, Second language, University Grants Commission, vernacular languages
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The language and bullshitness of ‘a nearly unreadable paper’
Earlier today, the Retraction Watch mailing list highlighted a strange paper written by a V.M. Das disputing the widely accepted fact that our body clocks are regulated by the gene-level circadian rhythm. The paper is utter bullshit. Sample its breathless … Continue reading
Posted in Life notes, Scicomm
Tagged pseudoscience, scientific papers, scientific publishing, Second language, University Grants Commission, vernacular languages
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A conference’s peer-review was found to be sort of random, but whose fault is it?
It’s not a good time for peer-review. Sure, if you’ve been a regular reader of Retraction Watch, it’s never been a good time for peer-review. But aside from that, the process has increasingly been taking the brunt for not being … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged arbitrariness, conditional probability, Corinna Cortes, double-blind peer-review, National Institutes of Health, Neil Lawrence, Neural Information Processing Systems conference, peer review, Retraction Watch, scientific publishing
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Some research misconduct trends by the numbers
A study published in eLIFE on August 14, 2014, looked at data pertaining to some papers published between 1992 and 2012 that the Office of Research Integrity had determined contained research misconduct. From the abstract: Data relating to retracted manuscripts and authors … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged Office of Research Integrity, retractions, scientific publishing, Statistics
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