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posted by martyb on Sunday October 01 2017, @11:44PM   Printer-friendly
from the scientific-skirmishes dept.

Earlier this month, when the biotech firm Human Longevity published a controversial paper claiming that it could predict what a person looks like based on only a teeny bit of DNA, it was just a little over a week before a second paper was published discrediting it as flawed and false. The lightening[sic] speed with which the rebuttal was delivered was thanks to bioRxiv, a server where scientists can publish pre-prints of papers before they have gone through the lengthy peer-review process. It took only four more days before a rebuttal to the rebuttal was up on bioRxiv, too.

This tit-for-tat biological warfare was only the latest in a series of scientific kerfuffles that have played out on pre-print servers like bioRxiv. In a piece that examines the boom of biology pre-prints, Science questions their impact on the field. In a time when a scandal can unfold and resolve in a single day's news cycle, pre-prints can lead to science feuds that go viral, unfolding without the oversight of peer-review at a rapid speed.

"Such online squabbles could leave the public bewildered and erode trust in scientists," Science argued. Many within the scientific community agree.

Should Scientists Be Posting Their Work Online Before Peer Review?

[Source Article (PDF)]: THE PREPRINT DILEMMA

What do you think ??


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  • (Score: 2) by sbgen on Tuesday October 03 2017, @01:15AM

    by sbgen (1302) on Tuesday October 03 2017, @01:15AM (#576350)

    Some things come to mind that I did not see explicitly mentioned in the comments. I am a scientist so I am interested in the publication matter - that is my declaration of conflict of interest.

    1 - "Science" journal argues against prepublication servers (bioRxiv in the case mentioned here). Of course it does, its very business model depends on scientific journals being closed and science getting accessed only via sanctioned journals. Do you know how much it costs to access an article published in Science for the taxpayer? I can only access their articles from the University. I keep reading the adage "Follow the money" in all articles but did not see it here

    2 - When you submit an article to a preprint server you get a DOI number (Digital Object Number). This is a document that tells who submitted it and when. That establishes the attribution credentials and guards against some one else stealing your idea

    3 - Not all the articles on preprint servers are good or peer reviewed or even noticed by the majority. However those that are good certainly float up. This situation is no different than that existing in "science" or other commercial scientific journals.

    4 - If scientists are squabbling in open about a work, as a practitioner and taxpayer I count my blessings. This is good, an open source approach. I hope those on this site understand it well.

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