Failure is part of the scientific enterprise. It is good that some scientists stick their neck out and dare to claim something. However, it is equally good that other scientists try to chop these heads off – with counter arguments. That is proper science and cherished academic tradition. Scientific truth is not the outcome of a single Eureka moment but of a long sociological process and hence it is subject to all human deficiencies.
http://hfalcke.wordpress.com/2014/05/28/science-in-the-era-of-facebook-and-twitter-get-used-to-it
Wednesday, 28 May 2014
Thursday, 22 May 2014
Elsevier is a horrible thing
Originally shared by John Baez
How much do universities pay for journal subscriptions? The publisher Elsevier works hard to keep this secret... and a representative recently explained why:
"Well, indeed there are confidentiality clauses inherent in the system, in our Freedom Collections. The Freedom Collections do give a lot of choice and there is a lot of discount in there to the librarians. And the use, and the cost per use has been dropping dramatically, year on year. And so we have to ensure that, in order to have fair competition between different countries, that we have this level of confidentiality to make that work. Otherwise everybody would drive down, drive down, drive drive drive, and that would mean that … [audience laughs]."
They keep the prices secret to keep the prices high! And the total cost of Elsevier subscriptions has been shooting up, not down.
So, it's great that Tim Gowers has used the Freedom of Information Act in Britain to find out how much universities are spending on Elsevier journals. The main exception: it's still secret at Oxford.
We should find out how much Oxford is paying... and find this out for universities around the world! Ted Bergstrom and others are focused on the US:
http://www.econ.ucsb.edu/~tedb/Journals/BundleContracts.html
Here's what Tim Gowers has found:
University Cost
Birmingham £764,553
Bristol £808,840
Cambridge £1,161,571
Cardiff £720,533
Durham £461,020
Edinburgh £845,000
Exeter £234,126
Glasgow £686,104
Imperial £1,340,213
King’s College £655,054
Leeds £847,429
Liverpool £659,796
Manchester £1,257,407
Newcastle £974,930
Nottingham £903,076
Queen Mary £454,422
Queen’s U Belfast £584,020
Sheffield £562,277
Southampton £766,616
U College London £1,381,380
Warwick £631,851
York £400,445
For more, read Gowers' blog! And if you have information about Elsevier subscription prices, please pass it on to me.
http://gowers.wordpress.com/2014/04/24/elsevier-journals-some-facts
How much do universities pay for journal subscriptions? The publisher Elsevier works hard to keep this secret... and a representative recently explained why:
"Well, indeed there are confidentiality clauses inherent in the system, in our Freedom Collections. The Freedom Collections do give a lot of choice and there is a lot of discount in there to the librarians. And the use, and the cost per use has been dropping dramatically, year on year. And so we have to ensure that, in order to have fair competition between different countries, that we have this level of confidentiality to make that work. Otherwise everybody would drive down, drive down, drive drive drive, and that would mean that … [audience laughs]."
They keep the prices secret to keep the prices high! And the total cost of Elsevier subscriptions has been shooting up, not down.
So, it's great that Tim Gowers has used the Freedom of Information Act in Britain to find out how much universities are spending on Elsevier journals. The main exception: it's still secret at Oxford.
We should find out how much Oxford is paying... and find this out for universities around the world! Ted Bergstrom and others are focused on the US:
http://www.econ.ucsb.edu/~tedb/Journals/BundleContracts.html
Here's what Tim Gowers has found:
University Cost
Birmingham £764,553
Bristol £808,840
Cambridge £1,161,571
Cardiff £720,533
Durham £461,020
Edinburgh £845,000
Exeter £234,126
Glasgow £686,104
Imperial £1,340,213
King’s College £655,054
Leeds £847,429
Liverpool £659,796
Manchester £1,257,407
Newcastle £974,930
Nottingham £903,076
Queen Mary £454,422
Queen’s U Belfast £584,020
Sheffield £562,277
Southampton £766,616
U College London £1,381,380
Warwick £631,851
York £400,445
For more, read Gowers' blog! And if you have information about Elsevier subscription prices, please pass it on to me.
http://gowers.wordpress.com/2014/04/24/elsevier-journals-some-facts
Thursday, 15 May 2014
Neil deGrasse Tyson doesn't understand philosophy, because he can't
Sometimes, Tyson is a complete berk. Sorry, but it's true. Calling philosophy useless is shooting oneself in the intellectual foot.
Originally shared by albanatita da
Tyson knocks out philosophy
Neil deGrasse Tyson is the champion of science, a role that he perfectly plays, a role really useful because most scientists are not willing to play it for the public.
Yet, I am a big suprised by his attack against philosophy. I just don't see the point; more generally I don't see the point of the schism between science and philosophy: they are so different and so complementary. Scientists find philosophy inefficient and useless and philosophers find science deeply limited in its objectives. Fine. But I see in this conflict only an academic war in order to get budgets and recognition. Otherwise, we have a brian which is able to develop different types of thinking: it would be a pity to limit its operation to one mode or the other. We can have a strong rational thinking sustained by organized experiments. But we are able to think in losse words with more freedom, in a more suited way for interactions and communications with the other members of our species.
I would be interested in your point of view. Do you believe that we have to narrow our thinking to aplly a pure scientific method (and in this case, which one?) or is it acceptable to have a more general thoughts, even if they are less "efficient".
http://scientiasalon.wordpress.com/2014/05/12/neil-degrasse-tyson-and-the-value-of-philosophy/
Originally shared by albanatita da
Tyson knocks out philosophy
Neil deGrasse Tyson is the champion of science, a role that he perfectly plays, a role really useful because most scientists are not willing to play it for the public.
Yet, I am a big suprised by his attack against philosophy. I just don't see the point; more generally I don't see the point of the schism between science and philosophy: they are so different and so complementary. Scientists find philosophy inefficient and useless and philosophers find science deeply limited in its objectives. Fine. But I see in this conflict only an academic war in order to get budgets and recognition. Otherwise, we have a brian which is able to develop different types of thinking: it would be a pity to limit its operation to one mode or the other. We can have a strong rational thinking sustained by organized experiments. But we are able to think in losse words with more freedom, in a more suited way for interactions and communications with the other members of our species.
I would be interested in your point of view. Do you believe that we have to narrow our thinking to aplly a pure scientific method (and in this case, which one?) or is it acceptable to have a more general thoughts, even if they are less "efficient".
http://scientiasalon.wordpress.com/2014/05/12/neil-degrasse-tyson-and-the-value-of-philosophy/
Monday, 12 May 2014
Inspirational Quotes About Ancient Mesopotamia
Part 1/2. Just finished reading Paul Kriwaczek's "Babylon", which has just one problem : it's far too short. I would have been perfectly happy if it had been about three times longer. As much a commentary on modern society as it as a description of the ancient Mesopotamians, I suspect I could enjoy Kriwaczek waxing lyrical on almost anything. Here he is on why pure research and science outreach are important :
"Those societies in which seriousness, tradition, conformity and adherence to long-established - often god-prescribed - ways of doing things are the strictly enforced rule, have always been the majority across time and throughout the world.... To them, change is always suspect and usually damnable, and they hardly ever contribute to human development. By contrast, social, artistic and scientific progress as well as technological advance are most evident where the ruling culture and ideology give men and women permission to play, whether with ideas, beliefs, principles or materials. And where playful science changes people's understanding of the way the physical world works, political change, even revolution, is rarely far behind."
EDIT : In its proper context, this is not an attack by a less-holy-than-thou atheist against religion - far from it. In fact he talks quite a bit about the role of religion in advancing civilization. The point is really directed against dogmatic, conservative viewpoints. This is about freedom of thought (particularly science) rather than attacking beliefs.
Part 2/2. Babylon can be a depressing book. Spanning 3,000 years of history, it seems that all civilisations - from the ultra capitalist to uber-communist, from enlightened utopias to the terrifyingly cruel and misogynistic - are destined for ruin. And yet Kriwaczek even manages to cast this in a positive light : drastic change can lead to renewal and improvement, and while one civilisation falls, its successor may learn from it.
"When, perhaps sooner, perhaps later, our civilization finally lies dying in the gutter, some of us will still be looking, as the ancient Mesopotamians taught us to do, at the stars."
Such poetry ! I practically swooned.
[I was unaware that this is a very minor modification to an Oscar Wilde quote, but it's still a good one.]
Part 3/3. On how ideology is necessary to spur human advancement :
"In this light it seems the momentous change to agriculture as the basis of life can only have been driven by the spread of a powerful new ideology, necessarily in those days expressed in the form of a new religion, propagated with... "messianic self-confidence"... it must have been a very powerful belief that persuaded them to follow a dream whose full working-out was both unforeseeable and unforeseeably far ahead, a belief that could persuade men and women that the sacrifice was worth making."
[There was a very interesting discussion on how this is not correct when applied, as Kriwaczek does, to the Agrigultural Revolution. Nevertheless, more broadly it's hard to disagree with the notion that it takes more than curiosity and facts to drive development.]
"Those societies in which seriousness, tradition, conformity and adherence to long-established - often god-prescribed - ways of doing things are the strictly enforced rule, have always been the majority across time and throughout the world.... To them, change is always suspect and usually damnable, and they hardly ever contribute to human development. By contrast, social, artistic and scientific progress as well as technological advance are most evident where the ruling culture and ideology give men and women permission to play, whether with ideas, beliefs, principles or materials. And where playful science changes people's understanding of the way the physical world works, political change, even revolution, is rarely far behind."
EDIT : In its proper context, this is not an attack by a less-holy-than-thou atheist against religion - far from it. In fact he talks quite a bit about the role of religion in advancing civilization. The point is really directed against dogmatic, conservative viewpoints. This is about freedom of thought (particularly science) rather than attacking beliefs.
Part 2/2. Babylon can be a depressing book. Spanning 3,000 years of history, it seems that all civilisations - from the ultra capitalist to uber-communist, from enlightened utopias to the terrifyingly cruel and misogynistic - are destined for ruin. And yet Kriwaczek even manages to cast this in a positive light : drastic change can lead to renewal and improvement, and while one civilisation falls, its successor may learn from it.
"When, perhaps sooner, perhaps later, our civilization finally lies dying in the gutter, some of us will still be looking, as the ancient Mesopotamians taught us to do, at the stars."
Such poetry ! I practically swooned.
[I was unaware that this is a very minor modification to an Oscar Wilde quote, but it's still a good one.]
Part 3/3. On how ideology is necessary to spur human advancement :
"In this light it seems the momentous change to agriculture as the basis of life can only have been driven by the spread of a powerful new ideology, necessarily in those days expressed in the form of a new religion, propagated with... "messianic self-confidence"... it must have been a very powerful belief that persuaded them to follow a dream whose full working-out was both unforeseeable and unforeseeably far ahead, a belief that could persuade men and women that the sacrifice was worth making."
[There was a very interesting discussion on how this is not correct when applied, as Kriwaczek does, to the Agrigultural Revolution. Nevertheless, more broadly it's hard to disagree with the notion that it takes more than curiosity and facts to drive development.]
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