Online articles lead to rapid scientific consensus, forgotten ideas(arstechnica.com)
arstechnica.com
Online articles lead to rapid scientific consensus, forgotten ideas
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080718-online-articles-lead-to-rapid-scientific-consensus-forgotten-ideas.html
7 comments
Leading to more herding and informational cascades (http://www.info-cascades.info/) wherein individuals cease to follow their own thoughts and instead rush to verify what they have heard through (in this case) the academic grapevine.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb also addresses this topic in some depth in his book "The black Swan" (http://www.amazon.com/Black-Swan-Impact-Highly-Improbable/dp...).
Nassim Nicholas Taleb also addresses this topic in some depth in his book "The black Swan" (http://www.amazon.com/Black-Swan-Impact-Highly-Improbable/dp...).
This is an interesting counter-point to another submission from today: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=249346
Not really. They complement each other. The one you showed claims (rightly so) that openness is a fundamental requisite for the progress of science. This one, shows how that openness results in more hits on the best papers on a given subject.
Think of it this way... even if you have easy access to 100x more papers than before, the number of citations that you put in your paper is still the same. This means that the you will try to pick the best references from the set you have available, which, in turn, will result in some particularly good papers being cited more often than they would otherwise.
Think of it this way... even if you have easy access to 100x more papers than before, the number of citations that you put in your paper is still the same. This means that the you will try to pick the best references from the set you have available, which, in turn, will result in some particularly good papers being cited more often than they would otherwise.
No, you're right, I just submitted the above before I finished reading this thread's article - I thought it was going in the opposite direction.
Why, when I click that link, do I have to click "back" 4 times in order to get back to HN? (Firefox 2, winxp)
Are they being rude by doing a bunch of redirects (and making it harder for me to leave) or is there something else going on?
Are they being rude by doing a bunch of redirects (and making it harder for me to leave) or is there something else going on?
I have the same setup, only one backup system.
Second, because I can easily get a different article, if the one I have doesn't say quite what I need, I can find something else.