[Taxacom] The Semantic Web and LOD would allow everyone to contribute without needing a huge "ministry of truth"

[Stephen Thorpe]

peer review is a pre-publication process, often done under time pressure by 
people who may not be good "details" people

the function of peer review, as I understand it, is just to make sure that 
anything published is up to a MINIMUM standard

surely, the real deal comes after publication, when the publication can be 
scrutinised at length by anybody and everybody in their own time - that is when 
the crap gets filtered out ...




________________________________
From: Peter DeVries <pete.devries at gmail.com>
To: Chris Thompson <xelaalex at cox.net>
Cc: "taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu" <Taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu>
Sent: Tue, 16 November, 2010 9:41:46 AM
Subject: Re: [Taxacom] The Semantic Web and LOD would allow everyone to 
contribute without needing a huge "ministry of truth"

Hi Chris,

The peer review comes in when others decide to cite your contribution or
choose not to cite your contribution.

The version can be determined by the date stamp on the record, and perhaps
some sort of checksum.

I was thinking of mainly in reference to species occurrence records,
checklists etc.

However, I have been wondering how someone could responsibly peer review a
taxonomic description without access to the specimens?

Also for many taxa there are very few people who could properly review a
description.

Often the only living expert is the author.

More often than not, no one dares to really examine and revise the
description until after the author has died.

- Pete

On Mon, Nov 15, 2010 at 2:29 PM, Chris Thompson <xelaalex at cox.net> wrote:

> Sorry, Pete,
>
> But while that may appear to be "very democratic," etc., but
>
> the hallmark of Science, as opposed to everything, is PEER-REVIEW.
>
> Yes, we do know there are problems with peer-review, but it remains the
> only mechanism to ensure that the public gets the BEST and most appropriate
> SCIENCE. [that has remained true since Henry Oldenburg started publishing
> the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society in 1665]
>
> And the other thing that peer-review mandates, is version control. That is,
> once the process is done, that version becomes a fixed point in the
> Scientific process.
>
> Your approach sound much like the wikipedia, wikispecies, etc., where
> anything can be throw out online and the Public may think it is Science.
>
> Yes, ICZN does not require peer-review. And only the minimal scientific
> standards. So, your suggestion would allow everyone to contribute at least
> in terms of names and nomenclatural acts once the ICZN recognizes and it is
> should digitial / online publication. But it will not serve the Public well.
>
> There is an old adage from the early days of computers, GIGO. Garbage IN,
> Garbage OUT. This remain very true today, so SCIENCE needs to be careful or
> it will lose its respect from the Public.
>
> Oh, well ...
>
> Chris
>
>
> -----Original Message----- From: Peter DeVries
> Sent: Monday, November 15, 2010 2:56 PM
> To: taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu
> Subject: [Taxacom] The Semantic Web and LOD would allow everyone to
> contribute without needing a huge "ministry of truth"
>
>
> On of the features of the semantic web and the Linked Open Data cloud is
> that they allow anyone who can post markup data to a web server to
> contribute.
>
> You  simply markup your data at a particular URL and then ping the semantic
> web to tell everyone that it is there.
>
> http://pingthesemanticweb.com/
>
> This would allow individual institutions and individuals to contribute
> their
> own data.
>
> Very democratic.
>
> If you don't agree with a particular contribution then just choose to
> ignore
> it in your analysis.
>
> Respectfully,
>
> - Pete
>
> --
> ---------------------------------------------------------------
> Pete DeVries
> Department of Entomology
> University of Wisconsin - Madison
> 445 Russell Laboratories
> 1630 Linden Drive
> Madison, WI 53706
> TaxonConcept Knowledge Base <http://www.taxonconcept.org/> / GeoSpecies
> Knowledge Base <http://lod.geospecies.org/>
> About the GeoSpecies Knowledge Base <http://about.geospecies.org/>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
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>
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>
> The Taxacom archive going back to 1992 may be searched with either of these
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>
> (1) http://taxacom.markmail.org
>
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>



-- 
---------------------------------------------------------------
Pete DeVries
Department of Entomology
University of Wisconsin - Madison
445 Russell Laboratories
1630 Linden Drive
Madison, WI 53706
TaxonConcept Knowledge Base <http://www.taxonconcept.org/> / GeoSpecies
Knowledge Base <http://lod.geospecies.org/>
About the GeoSpecies Knowledge Base <http://about.geospecies.org/>
------------------------------------------------------------
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