Online Science Discussion

Posted on July 18, 2007 by | 1 Comment

Curtis, one of the founders of JeffsBench wrote a very interesting article comparing JeffsBench to PLoS ONE in their roles in fostering online scientific discussions. Register, look around and comment….

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One response to “Online Science Discussion”

  1. bsci's avatar bsci | July 18, 2007 at 2:58 pm |

    I think the lack of desire to make negative comments is the main problem for PLoS ONE. While I can personally ask harsh questions to an author or give a harsh review, public criticism is more difficult. For example, at conferences, there is a fine line between asking a difficult question to a speaker at a public talk and being the person who asks a rude question. The problem is amplified online since it’s hard to judge context and emotions and the question is permanently linked to someone else’s research.
    I’m much less inclined to post a negative comment under my name in a permanently archived published forum. As an example, I recently read a PLoS ONE article and I thought the authors completely skipped describing the most unique aspect of their analysis method making it virutally impossible to evaluate the relevance of their findings. Assuming I was going to use PLoS comments, would I publically note this lack and permantly connect my complaint to this article or would I write the author and ask for more information?
    One solution would be I’d complain in private and the authors would be able to dyamically add a FAQ to their article over time. Perhaps this is a system that could be set up to be facilitated through the PLoS website. I could click a link to ask the authors a questions and the authors will have an option to post both the question and response on the PLoS site.