Seth’s blog

Mixing traditional and new methods, the journal [”the prestigious Shakespeare Quarterly”] posted online four essays not yet accepted for publication, and a core group of experts . . . were invited to post their signed comments on the Web site MediaCommons, a scholarly digital network. Others could add their thoughts as well, after registering with their own names. In the end 41 people made more than 350 comments, many of which elicited responses from the authors. The revised essays were then reviewed by the quarterly’s editors, who made the final decision to include them in the printed journal, due out Sept. 17.

The NY Times article never says how many of the four posted essays were published. If all of them made the cut, then perhaps the web stuff was just for show. And if any of them didn’t make the cut, the public embarrassment would be great. Perhaps too great. I suspect that all of them made the cut and the whole thing was closer to a publicity stunt than something that you could plausibly do again and again. If the probability of acceptance given that your essay is posted is 100%, what matters is getting posted. Peer review wasn’t replaced by web review; it was replaced by behind-closed-doors review.

Another instance of academics outwitting this particular journalist:

To Mr. Cohen, the most pressing intellectual issue in the next decade is this tension between the insular, specialized world of expert scholarship and the open and free-wheeling exchange of information on the Web. “And academia,” he said, “is caught in the middle.”

Haha! Poor poor professors! Caught in the middle! I was under the impression that professors = expert scholarship. Anything to distract attention from the real change: The more education you can get from the Web, the less you need to get from professors. The more evaluation you can get from the Web (e.g., by reading someone’s blog), the less you need to get from professors. The less professors are needed, the fewer of them there will be.

Thanks to Dave Lull.

Open-access is why you’re reading this. Because my long self-experimentation paper was in an open-access journal, many people could easily read it. I’m sure this is why I managed to get a contract to write The Shangri-La Diet.

The BMJ is experimenting with a way to support open access: Ask for publication fees from authors with grants that include the appropriate support.

We are introducing this policy as the next step in our efforts to ensure the sustainability of open access publication of research in the BMJ, and we are doing so in the spirit of experimentation. Many research funding organisations, sponsors, and universities now provide grants that cover journals’ fees for open access publication.

Wise. While I was writing The Shangri-La Diet, I visited Alice Water’s Edible Schoolyard. I learned that it cost hundreds of thousands of dollars a year, provided by foundations. As far as I could tell, the people in charge were doing nothing to reduce the subsidy required. Yet they wanted the idea to spread.

On Tuesday I gave a talk called “Arithmetic and Butter” at the Quantified Self meeting in Sunnyvale. I had about 10 slides but this one mattered most:

It shows how fast I did simple arithmetic problems (e.g., 2*0, 9-6, 7*9) before and after I started eating 1/2 stick (60 g) of butter every day. The x axis covers about a year. The butter produced a long-lasting improvement of about 30 msec. (more…)

This BMJ research asked how well authors responded to criticism in emailed letters to the editor. A highly original subject, but the researchers, one of whom (Fiona Godlee) is the top BMJ editor, appear lost. They summarize the results but appear to have no idea what to learn from them, ending their paper with this:

Editors should ensure that authors take relevant criticism seriously and respond adequately to it.

Which was perfectly reasonable before any data was collected. So that’s not a good conclusion.

The real conclusion is this: The letters to the editor were far better than nothing because authors responded to their criticisms about half the time.

One theme of this blog (I hope) is that it’s insider/outsiders — people with the knowledge of insiders but the freedom of outsiders — who can produce real progress. Ordinary insiders have the necessary knowledge but not the necessary freedom; ordinary outsiders have the freedom but not the knowledge. This article of mine makes this point in detail.

A similar point was made in a comment on a blog post by George Packer, the New Yorker writer. Packer had written an article about the U.S. Senate and his post was about how he’d written it. Someone commented:

I think Packer covered Washington with the refreshing take of a short-timer, one who didn’t have to make his living or sustain his career there. The disservice inherent in careerism connects with the Senate’s paralysis a la Tom Harkin’s quote about senators spending more than half their time fund-raising, one of the most troubling realities of the story. (Years ago, Bill Clinton said the House was ineffective because the members were “sleep deprived” from having to attend fundraisers every night. If a six-year term requires half-time fund-raising, imagine what a two-year term requires.)

I think the subtext is that journalistic long-timers, unlike short-timers like Packer, must spend a lot of time nurturing relationships, and this makes it harder to write unpleasant and unflattering truths.

Professional scientists spend a lot of time fund-raising, which in their case means applying for grants. A typical grant lasts three years. During those three years, because they need another grant when the current one runs out, they must publish several papers, recruit several grad students or post-docs (to do the heavy lifting), and avoid pissing off anyone in their field (because they might review your papers or grant proposals). Just as members of the House of Representatives never ever want to talk about how the constant need for money cripples them — it would make their job seem irrelevant and them appear impotent — neither do professional scientists.