»review«

Scientist blogger Nick Anthis reviews the book "Coming to Life: How Genes Drive Development" by Christiane Nüsslein-Volhard.

Best of Pogue (I guess, a free registration is required.) David Pogue explains wannabe trolls and pills how to turn to best performance and receive maximum audience. A daily annoyance of critics and columnists like Pogue.

Pogue: "WHEREAS, 95 percent of all the e-mail received by critics and columnists is civil, friendly or respectfully constructive;

"but WHEREAS, this is the Internet age, and we're all anonymous and can avoid making eye contact forever;

"and WHEREAS, there's so much information overload, a little heat and drama on your part may be necessary just to be heard above the din;

"and WHEREAS, many of those who fire off potshots are missing out on some of the best techniques for effective snippiness;

"THEREFORE let us now post the rules for membership in the Pills of the American Internet Neighborhood Society."

In his code of conduct for trolls and pills he gives nine rules.

Könnte sowas wie das Motto dieser site geben. Stammt aber vom ubiquitären Ernst Peter Fischer. Der fordert im Deutschlandfunk, dass wir die Forscher und deren Ergebnisse ebenso kritisieren sollten wie das im Literaturbetrieb üblich ist. Hört sich gut an, ist aber auch nicht uneigennützig. Schließlich wollten Fischer und Forscher im Gespräch bleiben.

Sorry, is wohl das erste deutsche Posting auf typolis.

The German science foundation (DFG, Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft), the major funding body for basic science in Germany, has been criticized on its disclosed review practise. Project proposers doesn't know neither the reviewers nor the final expertise. Hence, there was the urgent call for more transparency in the dicision making of spending public money. Michael Fuhs reports for Deutschlandfunk radio (17.5.2006) on a conference on this issue. Well, more transparency shall prevent nepotism. On the other hand, anonymous reviewers might handle more independent and more strict -- they don't have to fear rebuttals or latter attacks by refused proposers. However, an open discussion implemented within the review process might be favourable as already done at the open access journal Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics. Here, in one step of the review process the paper is debated on a public discussion board. The final review is under disclosure.

Again, anybody uses Wikipedia for a rapid reference. But how do you know about reliability and quality? Now, Nature editors and scientists surveyed science articles of the encyclopedia and report at Nature online (14.12.2005) that it "comes close to Britannica in terms of the accuracy of its science entries." Nice to know. Let's go back to work, using Wikipedia and Google.
http://www.nature.com/news/2005/051212/full/438900a.html

As the Einstein Year comes to an end, the science historian Ernst Peter Fischer draws some lessons learned from the event in an editorial for Physik Journal, December issue. First the political level: Support by prominent politicians was undistinguished (if you take the science minister aside). Much talk about innovation and the importance of science, but no credible visions or programmes. 2nd the public level: Did anybody get a grasp of Einstein's achievements. I mean, the science, not the person. Ask the people in the streets. Fischer says, the average impact is near zero. "What do you understand from Einstein's science? Nothing," is the most probable answer of the public, including journalists. Fischer states that the scientists and the journalists really failed to communicate the science, its concepts and consequences.

But Fischer also mentions that the scientists themselves showed up narrow minded: There are lots of new historical insights on how Albert Einstein or Max Planck developed new ideas, how they discussed them and what makes it hard for them to believe the new findings: Generally scientist told that Einstein didn't get the Noble Prize for Relativity Theory but for a paper on the nature of light. "But nobody told the public that with the new finding Einstein just understood that light has got such strange properties that makes it hard or impossible to understand," writes Fischer.