Revision as of 13:46, 1 June 2014

Tracking relations between scientific works, such as disputes

Prof. Yang tells Lane and me that students have trouble interpreting a dynamic immunology literature which includes published papers whose findings are wrong or irrelevant.
We are imagining a wiki platform that made the state of the science more clear.
Here's a feature it could have.

Examples:

AcaWiki has 1100 academic summaries.
See first two examples
Substantive comment is formalized: A disputes B (using Semantic MediaWiki)
Similarly could incorporate other relations between scientific works: A cites B ; A is an important predecessor to B ; A and B use the same data set or the same clinical trial information
note that the platform doesn't generally resolve claims or disputes ; it's finding a shallower kind of Truth

Could scale this up with big lists of relevant papers and works from many places including PubMed, SSRN, and Wikidata

The list is not an innovation but the relations between the works can be useful if they are formalized a bit

Trees of relationships can then be made visible ; could give a picture of a literature
Useful for:

students of this research or
researchers not at a "central" place that is well-connected to the latest news (global South?)
somebody with some other expertise (or technology or skill) that helps to address the specific question of fact. (Opportunities are rare if subfield has knowledge barriers around it.)

===> If the site were good it could save time for scientists and bring in more scientists

Report on disputes between papers on this site
on such a wiki, who is qualified to make commentary & identify disputes? (don't have consensus)
would like to work with more people and get more ideas of what a platform like that should have in it

Sources:

@@ Line 22: / Line 22: @@
 # students of this research or
 # researchers not at a "central" place that is well-connected to the latest news (global South?)
-# somebody coming in from some other expertise who doesn't actually understand it all but has a technology or a skill that helps to address the specific question of fact.  That happens all the time but it happens less if each subfield has knowledge barriers around it.
+# somebody with some '''other expertise''' (or technology or skill) that helps to address the specific question of fact.  (Opportunities are rare if subfield has knowledge barriers around it.)
 ===> If the site were good it could save time for scientists and bring in more scientists