Negative Irreproducible Tweets For Science Publishing 57
New submitter mwolfam writes "Every scientist has at least one paper or graph tucked in a folder that lies in a dusty corner of the hard drive next to that dancing baby that used to be all the rage. The data is interesting, but doesn't lend itself to the creation of the grand narrative you must have for a traditional publication. It's time to expand traditional scientific publication to include a place for the data that normally falls through the cracks: short but interesting bits of data, negative results, and irreproducible results."
Useful (Score:2, Insightful)
I can see this being really useful, especially if the raw data could be easily accessed and manipulated. On the other hand, I, as a researcher, would be loath to simply give away data, even data for which I can forsee little use, just on the off chance that it could be used in a future publication, or form the basis of further work. A rather ignoble attitude, I'll admit, but one which I'm sure many others would share, and I think this would be a huge obstacle for the idea.
More Tweets in a cacophony (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, if it gets it out there, but why Twitter? It's going to have to compete with all the usual garbage which is trending.
Brett6565 Vampires in yet another TV show :P #fail #bloodsuckers
Wignut Yankees sign another pitcher #goyanks
Waddleduck Another show about lawyers #fail #bloodsuckers
Cherbonevski sci.fi/fd98guyrr Nucleotides enzymolgy in e. nemtodii #science #wowwee #knowledge
yellomello Moar lolcat pictures of my kitty! bit.ly/r9d8gns9ds #LOL #CATS #LOLCATS
cityfied Tevez to Milan! Good-bye and don't let the door hit you on the arse on the way out! #MCFC #TEVEZ
Re:Traditional journals already do this. (Score:5, Insightful)
Tweets are an abomination. You still have to describe what you've done properly, otherwise the reported result is of no value.
There are journals [jnrbm.com] that were created specifically to report negative results. Irreproducible results, on the other hand, are not a scientific matter [jir.com].
Re:Of limited use (Score:5, Insightful)
Maybe not by itself, but sometimes interesting correlations pop up because of strange combinations. Or more likely, someone gets the results they were expecting, but sees an odd variance they can't explain. Perhaps if it was seen elsewhere, the odd data correllation may have some merit in investigation.
It's like an odd bug you find when using some software. You don't think it's important (perhaps it happens occasionally), but someone else decides to just mention it in passing, and then others chime in as it happened to them, and then hey, perhaps it's a bigger bug than expected.
Just putting it out there may bring others to notice they see the same thing as well and then provide incentive to do proper research in it.
Asimov's (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Traditional journals already do this. (Score:4, Insightful)
I think the tweet idea is slightly different. For example, a lot of work that a scientist does is collecting data to make sure equipment is working properly. Usually these experiments aren't worth publishing and probably wouldn't make it past a peer review because 1) they're usually not novel experiments 2) they don't tell a story or add much value, but I think it could be useful to share this type of data. I mean, if you've collected it, why not share it?