Re: Flashback to 1971: formalizing informal communication channels

[Phil Davis <pmd8@cornell.edu>]

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