Links for 2011-04-24

“While this is an interesting topic, I’d rather discuss a related issue:  How much public funding triggers the need to make something publicly available?  For example, suppose I used NSF funding to buy a coaxial cable for $5 as part of project A.  Then, later on, I use that coax in project B, which is funded at the $100K level by a non-public source.  I don’t think any reasonable person would then argue that all of project B’s results should become public domain because of 0.005% public support.  When does the obligation kick in?”

“I’ve experimented with classes that are annotating primary documents, something that other faculty at Swarthmore have taken to a whole new level. Similarly interesting discussions arise out that kind of “applied knowlege”.

Another concept that I haven’t tried yet but which seems like a natural possibility is guiding students through the preparatory work that an author or producer might do if they were adapting a body of knowledge, a setting or a story for some kind of media besides scholarly publication. Say, what kinds of researched knowledge you might need if you were going to write a script, make costumes, find locations, fine-tune dialogue, craft audio, and so on for a film working with a particular historical setting.

Or, in another case, if you were going to debate and discuss what you’d have to do to successfully adapt a science-fiction novel to a film.”

“This is not an exact recipe and may vary by collaboration but the key message is the same: there are many levels of review which must be satisfied before an analysis represents a final result. It is also worth noting that a result published in a journal which claims a statistical significance below the magic 5 sigma level should be treated with caution until the same collaboration can provide more convincing results with more data or that a rival experiment/collaboration can check their own independent data and confirm the same result. For me only this final point, ie. analyses from independent collaborations which have passed through the above review process BOTH seeing the same new physics effect will convince me that it is there.”

The longevity and indestructibility of the long-running tv series, explained by SCIENCE!