Welcome to academia. Here you have the opportunity to learn from the vast expanse of human knowledge. You may, if you are lucky, also be able to add to that collection of knowledge. You already, however, are the lucky one. You have completed the rigors of high school, an institution that very few in the world have the opportunity to attend. You have applied to this university and unlike others, you were accepted because you met our high criteria.
Now where do you go from here? First, you will attend general classes for at least half of your 4 (or probably more) years here. Eventually you will be able allowed into the courses that cover the things you've actually wanted to study for a long time. However, those courses are really only an introduction or watered down version of the stuff that we, your teachers know. To really learn what we know, you will need to attend graduate school.
Congratulations, you have an undergraduate degree. So now you get the chance to actually doing research. We wish you the best of luck. If the peer reviewers are nice, your paper might not get too slaughtered that you may be able to publish it.
Had enough satire.... well, it all has a little base in some truth. Thankfully I go to BYU where undergraduate research is so heavily pushed. I have the opportunity to do astronomy research and there is a high probability I can publish into the scientific gated community as an undergraduate.
So what do you think? Should the scientific communities be more open to the public or should they be gated to maintain quality control?
4 comments:
Well, I don't think many peer-reviewed, scientific articles are that refined of a quality in the first place. The articles are called "peer-reviewed" because the scientists are getting reviewed by their PEERS. In other words, the people who review scientific articles for publication are also the people who write articles and have them reviewed by the other people who write articles. Opening the gate to the public, or at least a greater portion of the public, may actually improve quality control because it would reduce the amount of you-scratch-my-back-and-I'll-scratch-yours going on in the scientific community.
i agree with meg. i think that greater openness to the public would probably improve the quality. however one thing that would perhaps be a problem is the masses honestly may not understand what they are looking at and therefore their feedback is worthless. (did that sound at all like the catholic church's thinking in restricting the bible to the priests use only?) but one thing is for sure andrew: i am finally starting to study stuff i really care about in college. i know that you were saying all that tongue-in-cheek but i think you said it right.
Jake, you make a good point. Do the masses even know what they are talking about. Open source programing is great because lots of people know how to program. What about scientific research? Are the masses up to the challenge. I think many of them are. I think that the masses could perform peer-review just the way that Wikipedia articles maintain their integrity through cloud sourcing.
Meg, I understand that there is probably a bit of politics that goes in to peer-reviewing scientific papers, however, I think Jake got it right in that the masses probably are not intelligent enough to review their papers. For example, have you ever tried to read a scientific paper? Necessity dictates a need for basic knowledge of the subject before reading the material.
Also, what happens to quality when the masses try to publish their ideas? I think it would be similar to when Martin Luther opened the gate to challenging the Catholic Church, Joseph Smith ended up trying to choose between several different factions.
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