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Sergio,
as most other contributors, I think that you are seeing things too pessimistic here. Critical discussion and opposition really are important for the advancement of science. Indeed, I believe that we need more of that and that we have to find more open ways to oppone and discuss scientific results. We need more discussion in conferences after the talks, and we need a better way of discussion of scientific papers. Sometimes I have am considered as inpolite when I ask a really critical question after a scientific presentation. But how can that be? I think everybody who presents or publishes in sciences should have good arguments for all of his statements and results. If that is the case then he will be well prepared to reply to that question. If not then the question has disclosed some weekness in his research and it should help to improve. Discussion at the end of talks also are too much bilateral between speaker and opponent. Usually no real discussion between many of the experts in the room evolves. But that would be interesting and sometimes needed. Today mostly the discussion is just a question by an opponent and an answer by the speaker, and it ends a bit vague. If the question was unfair or the speaker not well able to find the right answer, he goes home with a bad feeling, and if on the other hand the reply was wrong or unfair, the opponent goes home with a bad feeling. It would be good if we would have the culture of discussion that in such a situation other people stand up in order to either support the speaker or the opponent, or have a third oppinion. I think we need this culture even more in scientific literature. We need more "Comments on paper xyz", and we need comments on comments, but usually the latter are not allowed by the editors any more. Hence it is like in the conference room: The author has the last word, and if the reply on a comment is again misleading, the opponent has no way of replying any more. And we need the discussion on papers on a shorter time scale and at one place. Today each round takes 2 months at minimum. Nowadays it should be doable to do such discussion of a paper electronically, and it should be available online at the end of each article. Hence, when downlaoding an article you could have a quick look whether there has been a discussion and what the average opinion had been. The reason why I think that we need such discussion culture and forum is that I am less optimistic about peer review meanwhile. No question, we need the peer review system to filter out some rubbish and to have a barrier which hinders unserious people to submit all rubbish as scientific papers. But I am afraid that much too many bad papers go through the system and after passing can claim to be peer reviewed. Some influencing people in the community who know the editors since long get everything published, even if one reviewer has detected substantial mistakes. In one case I proved mathmatically that some equation which was considered by the author as something new, was mathmatically identical with an earlier published equation of someone else. I suggest not to publish the paper with that wrong claim. The paper appeared essentially unchanged in an ACS journal. Asking the editor how this could happen, he answered that he had gotten two positive and one negative reports. Thus we had accepted it. Asking him, whether he had sent my substantial concerns to the other reviewers in order to reconsider their opinion, he answered that that would not be within the rules of the journal. And just yesterday I saw that a paper by an influencing author appeared online essentially unchanged, although I again had a raised a number of severe concerns. Therefore I believe: We need more critical post-peer-review debates. Andreas Am 18.08.2012 02:43, schrieb Sergio Manzetti sergio.manzetti-$-gmx.com: I think JJ and Amy are getting closer to the point I am stating. There are many cases where people with great ideas never make it to the surface, either because they are not "strong" enough to "battle" against opposition or criticism, or they simply don't want to. I know of one who had a great method to treat people, but because it was never scientifically validated, he received cold showers each time he opened up his method to scientist. In the meantime, his method treated a lot of people, and they recovered. Scientists ARE trained to validate, annihilate, exclude, disregard and eventually accept. This trait of the scientist is to me a little stupidious, it seems like House in the series at the hospital. He goes through a bunch of hypotheses and tests them all on the patient, meanwhile the patient suffers and at the end after hitting the right hypothesis he calls himself a great doctor (or at least appears to be one). Same thing are scientists, they are recognized as great after they have learned on how to tramp down opposition as the first step in their life as scientists, then they have to defend their research to grant-organization, and fill up the applications with "why this is so important for the future and society". Still in a near pseudo-darwinistic behavior, the scientist fights through the hierarchy of late nights and hard work, and at the age of 70 reaches the Emeritious stage. To many this is "life at its best", and many are also good examples of nice events, but at the end of the day, the way scientist DO science is build on that everything has to be bullet and water proof before he even discusses the theory with others, otherwise the classical debates begin. I have also heard from previous Senior Scientists passing the age of 50 of witnessing and ENJOYING debates where scientist where verbally annihilating each other, and I recall particularly what this professor said in the context with the debate he saw "it was blood on the dance floor". At the end of the day it is a litigious procedure that scientists have to "survive" through, and it creates FRICTION. This friction is my whole point of the discussion: It is energy and can be used to do great science (pr other positive things), and not wasted on discussions and debates. Those are just for entertaining the competitive nature in people. Competition, debate and discussion requires energy, again, that energy can be used for other things and is valuable. -- Prof. Dr. Andreas Klamt CEO / Geschäftsführer COSMOlogic GmbH & Co. KG Burscheider Strasse 515 D-51381 Leverkusen, Germany phone +49-2171-731681 fax +49-2171-731689 e-mail klamt a cosmologic.de web www.cosmologic.de [University address: Inst. of Physical and Theoretical Chemistry, University of Regensburg] Join us at the 4th-COSMO-RS-Symposium April 2013 Details at www.cosmologic.de/symposium2013 HRA 20653 Amtsgericht Koeln, GF: Prof. Dr. Andreas Klamt Komplementaer: COSMOlogic Verwaltungs GmbH HRB 49501 Amtsgericht Koeln, GF: Prof. Dr. Andreas Klamt |