These failures of science online are all examples where scientists show a surprising reluctance to share knowledge that could be useful to others. This is ironic, for the value of cultural openness was understood centuries ago by many of the founders of modern science; indeed, the journal system is perhaps the most open system for the transmission of knowledge that could be built with 17th century media. The adoption of the journal system was achieved by subsidizing scientists who published their discoveries in journals. This same subsidy now inhibits the adoption of more effective technologies, because it continues to incentivize scientists to share their work in conventional journals, and not in more modern media.I remember the excitement that I had when I entered the PhD program in Neuroscience at Baylor College of Medicine. I was going to become part of Science where I was going to take part in the expansion of human knowledge in the most collaborative environment that has ever been seen. Or so I thought. It turned out that success as a scientist hinged on keeping much of what you do a secret until you can get to a place where you are ready to publish. If you reveal too many of your secrets you could get scooped. Scooped!? A term taken from newspapers -- a term that underscores the need to guard your secrets lest you lose everything for which you have worked.
Disillusionment with the system was definitely one of the things that helped me decide to leave science. Another was that I was just not all that happy doing "bench work" which is scientist slang for doing experiments in a lab. In the Schultz lab where I worked, Paul Schultz was about the best mentor that I could have asked for. I don't think I've ever met anyone who worked as hard as Paul does, and it's hard to think of a nicer guy. Still, I found that I had much more fun working on the software that ran our experiments than on the experiments themselves, and so my future path was decided. In fact, in open source software I have actually found an environment where collaboration really is open and easy. Hopefully the world of science can learn from the success of open source. Again from Nielson:
We should aim to create an open scientific culture where as much information as possible is moved out of people’s heads and labs, onto the network, and into tools which can help us structure and filter the information. This means everything - data, scientific opinions, questions, ideas, folk knowledge, workflows, and everything else - the works. Information not on the network can’t do any good.
If the tools and the cultural changes discussed in The Future of Science become reality, science can again become the most collaborative endeavor that the world has ever seen. It would become a place that I probably would not have left -- of course that is if I could have found a way to get past my bench work problems.
View comments