»communication«

Impact factors and citation indices are a somewhat gold standard to measure quality and productivity of a scientist. But critics question the validity of these measures. Now, Jürgen Kaube writes in FAZ (24.7.2008) about a statistical report on impact factors commissioned by the International Mathematical Union (among others). The conclusion is, the significance of these citation measures like the impact factor or the Hirsch index is poor, if not nil.

Lisa Margonelli reviews in the NY Times (15. June 2008) the book "Bottlemania" by Elizabeth Royte. The message: "So why did Americans spend nearly $11 billion on bottled water in 2006, when we could have guzzled tap water at up to about one ten-thousandth the cost? The facile answer is marketing, marketing and more marketing." We know, tapped water is as good as bottled water, or even better. Royte gives now a broader picture, including political, economic and cultural background. I guess, all speaks for the tap.

Talking about carbon offsets is en vogue, and Benjamin Lester reports in Science magazine (5.10.2007) how the scientific community addresses the problem of increasing carbon emissions by conference attendees traveling -- mostly by plane -- to the many meetings. Actually, scientist should be more concerned about CO2 emissions released by their (travel) habits. Lester issues travel tips that start with "skip meetings when you can", followed by "ask conference organizers to team with local hotels to reduce linen changes and other waste for conference attendees". Thus far the funny part. Some years ago conference organizers didn't care about the carbon footprint of their meetings. It was merely a private issue of scientists. Now, wind has changed. First, on registration forms you see check boxes for compensation of your CO2 emissions. Second, organizers consider video conferences or a maximum attendance. The reason: Many conferences attract thousands of scientists (Champion is the Neuroscience conference with 35.000 in the year 2005), studies have shown that more than 90 percent of CO2 emissions of a meeting are produced by traveling by plane. One easy step to curb the scientists' emissions is to organize meetings in easy reachable cities with direct flight connections.

Nice idea to pair up scientists with politicians to emphasize the increasing importance of science and tech related issues in today's society and economics. This week "brings 14 scientists from around Europe to Brussels for a week where they attend meetings, seminars and networking events. The MEPs will also be visiting the labs of the scientists to find out about their work," writes the British Royal Society in a press release (3.10.2007). In recent years the Royal Society has made good experiences with the scientist-politician entanglement at Westminster.

Scientists beside the mainstream often struggle hard to receive funding or acknowledgment by their peers. Take the BSE case. A very, very tiny minority of researchers still thinks its a virus causing the human type of it, Creutzfeldt–Jakob, or scrapie in sheep. Common sense among scientists is that protein particles, prions, are the cause. Even more, the prion evidence has been awarded a Nobel prize. Laura Manuelidis of Yale now published on the virus hypothesis in well-known journal PNAS. Heidi Ledford reports on the case and comments by the scientific community in Nature magazine (7.2.2007).

You never came across African science because it's hardly featured in magazines like Science or Nature? Then check an article in the Economist (1.2.2007) for some examples of research on the African continent. "Good science does get done in Africa, though it tends to go unnoticed."

Ulf von Rauchhaupt features in FAZ (26.1.2006) Web 2.0 ideas and identifies two categories where the so-called wisdom of the crowds sums up for a better knowledge: an Ebay-style and a Wikipedia-style mechanism. With Ebay an economic supply and demand scheme leads to the best price, a statistical average by the many users. With Wikipedia, statistically, mistakes average out. But there are further problems like the credibility of sources. Rauchhaupt comes to the conclusion that Web 2.0 applications are powerful tools to foster knowledge but they only work with a sound base of (public funded) science.
BTW: Rauchhaupt's article is essentially a Web 2.0 product as Internet users could add comments and inspiration to a pre-print web version of his article scheduled for print in the daily FAZ.

That's funny: on one hand some British universities check secretly how polite their staff welcome student candidates and their families during open house days. On the other they are upset that presumably students set up their own rating scheme on the internet. Claire Sanders reports in a front page piece for THES (26.1.2007) that universities seek legal counsel over the student advice site www.williseemytutor.com
Naturally, they don't like a poor rating explained with "This university is rated Poor as it's possible you will never see your lecturer." Give university staff a push to think about the advice.

Mandy Garner writes in the THES (5.1.2007) about Brian Cox, now a physicist and team leader at the Large Hardon Collider project at CERN, Switzerland. Cox turned a band member of D:Ream, touring with Take That. Garner thinks that Cox who is affilated with Manchester University is quite the right person to "help make the subject cool" to the gerneral public.

Ben Goldacre gives in his recent column Bad Science for the Guardian (30.12.2006) a brief summary of dodgy science in 2006.