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Re: Flashback to 1971: formalizing informal communication channels



Joe Toth wrote:

"has the presence of both sanctioned/published and unsanctioned/pre-pub materials in an IR really begun to dismantle science's walls of rigor?"
Phil responds:

Has anyone died of theoretical/high-energy physics, or of Topology or Bayesian economics? While I take your point about looking at the effect of fields that have routinely adopted the model of widely disseminating pre-published results, this may not be an appropriate model to apply to the medical sciences and the NIH mandate. I'm not claiming that the NIH mandate will necessarily do damage. It might do a lot of good, or have little effect at all except to add a layer of administration. --Phil Davis

original quote:

"accelerating the flow of scientific information in the informal domain and expanding its dissemination is a problem precisely because it occurs in systems that obscure the boundary between the informal and formal domains. This boundary is one that science has deliberately erected to curtail, temporarily, the flow of information until the information has been examined against the current state of knowledge in a discipline. Non-scientists view procedure of curtailment as ultra-conservative; experienced, practicing scientists perceive it as the essential feature of science....The long judicious procedure by which this conversion is made is unique to science. To reorganize it for the sake of speed, or for open communication with other spheres of intellectual endeavor, would almost certainly dismantle the institution of science as we know it today."

Garvey, W. D., & Griffith, B. C. (1971). Scientific
communication: Its role in the conduct of research and creation
of knowledge. American Psychologist, 26(4), 350-362. p.362