I’ve always wondered if this blog medium might be useful for doing research. The natural place for academic physics research usually goes by publishing papers and waiting for a response in the form of other papers. This model works extremely well, until one finds oneself publishing something extremely speculative, in which case it does not usually live up to its expectations: usually there is no feedback, or even worse, only negative feedback in a referee report.
Sometimes I have a half-baked idea with few chances of it ever seeing the light of day and I would anyhow like some kind of input on the idea from a more general audience. Blogging about it is not as crazy as it sounds. So long as enough warning signs are put at the beginning of a post, it should be possible to have a serious discussion about interesting stuff.
Of course, there is also the signal to noise factor (number of comments that are useful/ number of total comments), which tends to be small. But compared to zero or negative feedback, that might not be as bad.
Rather than philosophize about it too much, I thought I would ask your opinion instead, and perhaps in the future I will have a post on some of these half-baked (almost crazy) ideas of mine.
I’m waiting for your opinions.
I think the web is a good venue for discussing speculative research (and not speculative research for that matter), but I am not sure that a blog is the ideal tool for the purpose. I’ve recently started using Elgg to maintain a repository of research ideas, notes and collaborations. There isn’t much there yet, but here is what a sample page looks like:
http://www.quantumcollaborations.org/pg/pages/view/27/
It is possible to enable or disable comments on every page, so you can choose whether or not you want blog-like feedback on a project. There are fine-grained access controls, which allow you to start writing notes in private and then share them at a later date with either a trusted group of collaborators or with the public. You can also choose who has editing rights on each page, in case the project turns into a collaboration. Basically this means that you can run the spectrum from keeping a private repository of notes to doing full-blown open notebook science, and you can choose how open to be on a per-project basis.
Another benefit is the LaTeXmathml plugin that I wrote, which makes LaTeX the default markup language for the site, making it easy to extract papers at a later date.
Anyway, I’d encourage anyone interested in this sort of thing to install their own instance of Elgg and give me feedback on what features are needed to make it a better platform for scientific research.
A “cost-benefit” analysis:
Blogging costs time. Blogging about a very speculative idea might cost not only time, but also a bit of one’s reputation if the idea is somewhat “crackpot-ish”. However, if the value of the (non-irrelevant) feedback one gets outweighs these costs, then blogging as a research tool might be quite worthwhile indeed.
Not all ideas are ripe for publication. Instead of confining such ideas in one mind only, I believe that sharing them with the world can only be a good thing. I would compare research blogging to informal discussions in front of the whiteboard: one presents an idea in the form of a post, and the brainstorming takes place in the comment section.
One always risks public humiliation when presenting a half-baked speculative idea in a public forum. But doesn’t all Natural Science start with hypotheses which are inherently speculative and half-baked? I believe that anyone who has presented his ideas in a thoughtful manner, deserves constructive feedback (except for the usual crackpots). In the established publication system, feedback can take months, if not years. In blogging, feedback can happen in a matter of minutes. Given all this, what is there not to like in research blogging
I think you may be a trend setter if you could get your peers to contribute.
Folks in Secret Blogging seminar have been posting research grade papers (as far as I can tell) and asking questions to their readers, for instance, this as a recent example. I think Terry Tao too uses his blog to try new ideas. A research blog for physics would be great.
Great idea David. I always had in mind the model of a group meeting, where people learn from one another and use one another as a sounding board. I think the main difficulty is getting the attention of the relevant people and holding it, maybe it is a chicken and egg effect – after a sufficient number of people finds it useful, it will work better.
Lots is said about the signal to noise ratio in blogs, all the irrelevant and uncivil comments etc. etc.. I think it is actually much more time-efficient medium than people give it credit for. It takes trivial amount of time to skip over useless comments, anyhow most of the really crappy stuff is produced by small number of people. If you weigh the signal/noise ratio by the amount of time it takes rather than by number of comments, this is not such a big issue.
So, I say go for it!
I think there advantages and disadvantages:
Advantages:
1) Exchange of Ideas – Really the ultimate goal, if people are willing to participate, you can get a level of “synergy” that generates a better result than you can achieve on your own.
2) Faster Dissemination of Results – If you come up with a really good idea, and its freely available, the idea will travel much more quickly on the web, and will have a better opportunity to make a positive impact.
Disadvantages:
1) Reputation – Good ideas are great, but you have to be careful about all the bad ideas that are generated as well. I want to believe that every person has their share of good/bad ideas. However, there are certainly those individuals who are much better at keeping there bad ideas out of the public eye.
2) Credit – If a person is concerned about getting the credit they deserve, the web may not be the best venue for discussing your ideas. Although some people are very careful about giving credit to appropriate people, most people are more than willing to steal ideas.
I think it comes down to a careful balance between what you need to do to feed yourself and meet your obligations, and promoting the interests of humanity at large. A careful balance between selfishness and altruism.
Although, I probably am close to being “noise” by the judgement of others, sometimes the only way to improve oneself is to stick one’s neck out and participate. Sometimes you find yourself saying something stupid, but as you learn and practice you find yourself producing a few good nuggets.
Hi Guys, I’ve posted about this a number of times. See here and linked post within for discussion:
Research Blogging.
“Some time ago I spoke about the idea of using blogging as a sharper tool for exchanging and even developing research ideas. The conversation about the suggestion degenerated into vapour, at some point, and having floated the idea and learned from the conversation, I left it alone. In public at least.
In private, I continued. The fact is that I have other blogs on the go. [...]”
-cvj
A rich diamond mine yields 1 gram of gem/tonne dross, 1 ppm. So science – resistance of a spectacularly cold mercury thread, barium not a transuranic element, a git making art from old fungal cultures, one transistor in a world of vacuum tubes, a molecular still whose remnant crud was named nylon, Yang and Lee being asymmetrically naughty.
The Dark Side is ownership. Invention not obvious to one skilled in the art, unless otherwise protected, has no more than one year of private ownership after public disclosure.
Professional management pledges to end discovery: it cannot be budgeted or PERT-charted, it is in every way an act of insubordination. Hey grant funding… science has upped its standards; up yours.
You can always try, and give up if it doesn’t work! There’s no way to tell if an idea is good or not before putting it into practice!
Hey Clifford, continuing this conversation…”research” is not specific enough, at least for what I have in mind. It is true that online tools can help you communicate with your students and collaborators, but this is just a refinement of a relationship that exists independently.
What I thought blogs would be uniquely good for, but did not pan out yet, is that unfocused and unspecific (though extremely useful) exploration of ideas, like what we do sometime while enjoying the sun in Aspen, or having a beer in Durham…So, for example I can write a post about something that confuses me (always a process that clarifies one’s thought anyhow), send it out and hope to have a conversation developing, with unexpected participants and unpredictable results. This is something different than sending an email to my friends and collaborators, I guess the idea is using the “long tail effect” (something Jacques sometimes refers to) in order to access existing knowledge that is otherwise not so easy to discover. Also, like in group meetings, have a lot of fun in the process.
I could get used to all of these constructive opinions. Keep em coming.
Moshe,
We do the speculative unfocused stuff on the private blog too. But yes, the more open access sort of musings might be fraught with difficulty. Please see my earlier posts and the numerous comments about the difficulties (real and imagined) about the issue (younger people thinking they might look silly, people worry about ideas being not correctly attributed, and so on and so forth). I also suggested some specific models -organized and driven through existing groups around the world taking turns leading/hosting- that could be tried.
Worth pursuing. I think that the best way to figure out what works is just to try it. Problem is, people (such as I – and you) have tried – on my current public blog, my previous public blogging place, and elsewhere. It usually has nobody engaging at all, or descends into squabbling, or is hijacked by random people who are eager to be generous with their, er, favourite amateur theories of the universe. Someone could start again with yet another bog, but I don’t see it changing, especially since the whole blogging thing has plateaued and fragmented. I think that narrower foci with more restricted access such as the models discussed in my two posts might be worth experimenting with.
Good luck.
-cvj
Yeah, the restricted access idea may work well, something I was thinking about for a while, you may recall. However, it doesn’t have the benefits I was talking about above, those require communication between people who are not necessarily close friends. Maybe once it grows beyond a certain critical mass, essentially involving a finite fraction of the community. But I agree that blogs have been around for a while, acquiring a certain reputation which may inhibit their potential. Trying different things may be the way to go, I still think there is tremendous untapped potential there.
Perhaps rather than restricted access, one should try a “screened access”. Content is open, but participants must meet some criteria, a short, non-specific bio, and an explanation why they should be allowed to participate. I would also recommend that anonymity still be allowed for participants.
It seems that if people feel that they are “buying in” then they have a little more invested. It also also allows the active participants to hold people’s feet to the fire if someone really isn’t providing positive content. Anonymity and open content allows for a higher fraction of participants who are outside one’s own “circle”.
As far as naive pet theories, I think you’ll find that a lot of those are associated with a person’s level of education of the subject, but are only proposed because the person is trying to figure out why those theories are wrong, and not because they take the theory seriously. I think even the best theorists are always searching for good analogies for how best to describe their ideas. If someone is honestly trying to learn and is being respectful, then their participation can only be a good thing in the long run.
I agree that there are too many factors that could determine the outcome of such an attempt. You’ll never know unless you try it. It may truly build momentum and evolve to something successful with a big audience and constructive participation. Nevertheless this will depend largely on the quality and the number of participants. In that direction the popularity and reputation of the blog itself plays a very important role. Thus you must first prepare the ground. I suggest first to build gradually a reputation and a large audience for your blog and then try it. Now it’s too soon i think. If you try something now and you get little or no response, you’ll be disappointed and you’ll drop the whole idea.
There are also copyright issues. What If someone takes your half-baked idea further and then writes a detailed complete paper without giving you the proper credit?
I noticed you didn’t use a label and a “fiction” one might help to that regard?
Also, as much a Clifford might be disappointed I think the work is an unselfish one and has no expectations other then to be true to yourself and work the ideas. Many people have learnt much from this kind of openness.
I realize there is “the more serious blog” and there is nothing wrong from working that way, but I think it counter productive to cut yourselves off from the public. I learnt much from Jacques as well, and from the many contributors in science who thought to associate this way in an open public debate about their principles in regards to the sections of science and math they are working in.
While we know most of you are of the trade it should not stop you from being creatively open either. So take the chance. We know how human you are.
Best,
As long as you preface your comments with the appropriate disclaimers this is really no different than speaking about tentative ideas at conferences. The advantage here, of course, is that you can cite your blog posts later when you formally publish.
DB said: “and perhaps in the future I will have a post on some of these half-baked (almost crazy) ideas of mine.”
I think that would be marvellous and really interesting. Please do it!