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

Mon Nov 15 16:39:44 CST 2010

>what can you do when there are NO peers

a good example of this is rolling off the presses as we speak, in the form of 
the NZ Inventory of Biodiversity, and particularly the chapter on Hexapoda. Each 
of the sections were written by an expert on that particular group (actually, 
not even that is true, but we won't go there), and they all acted as peer 
reviewers for each other. But hang on, what does a lepidopterist know about NZ 
Coleoptera, etc. etc. ??? Not much, and the sections are all just details on the 
NZ fauna of each group. So, effectively there were no peers, and nothing much 
for them to review apart from details on groups that they don't know much about! 
Worse is that there are many records of undescribed taxa etc. given without any 
indication of the basis for those records, so the records are effectively 
irrefutable and unverifiable. Is this science? As a hard copy, it is already out 
of date, so wouldn't it be far better to develop the wiki system for this kind 
of checklist stuff? I do not particularly value unverifiable/irrefutable 
information of this kind written in stone. The user is unable to distinguish 
errors and omissions from "oh, they must know something I don't which makes what 
they say correct", particularly since it is not a synonymic checklist ...

________________________________
From: Chris Thompson <xelaalex at cox.net>
To: Peter DeVries <pete.devries at gmail.com>; Stephen Thorpe 
<stephen_thorpe at yahoo.co.nz>
Cc: "taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu" <Taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu>
Sent: Tue, 16 November, 2010 11:22:08 AM
Subject: Re: [Taxacom] The Semantic Web and LOD would allow everyone to 
contribute without needing a huge "ministry of truth"

Thanks, Pete:

Please note that I did add the caveat about peer-review not being perfect.

Yes, for examples, 

what can you do when there are NO peers, or
what can you do, when all the “peers” believe in the same paradigm, such as the 
creation “scientists,” who reveiwed a clearly non-scientific paper on 
creationism and approved its publication.

So, yes, you are correct, in that peer-review when possible set a MINIMUM 
standard before publication.

And, yes, the most important part of the scientific process is the subsequent 
testing, re-testing, etc., of published hypotheses. That is, SCIENCE.

Peer-review is the minimal FILTER to save time of real scientists from having to 
test bogus hypotheses, etc.

Enjoyed your comments. They are very useful to focus our thoughts.

Sincerely,

Chris

From: Peter DeVries 
Sent: Monday, November 15, 2010 4:36 PM
To: Stephen Thorpe 
Cc: Chris Thompson ; taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu 
Subject: Re: [Taxacom] The Semantic Web and LOD would allow everyone to 
contribute without needing a huge "ministry of truth"
I am proposing you simply ignore the LOD data that you are unsure about.

The data you do trust and use is cited in your derivative work.

How many journal reviewers type in the manuscripts lat and long values to see if 
they are where they are supposed to be?

How many journal reviewers have access to the original data to they can test the 
validity of an analysis?

- Pete

On Mon, Nov 15, 2010 at 3:04 PM, Stephen Thorpe <stephen_thorpe at yahoo.co.nz> 
wrote:

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/>
>> ------------------------------------------------------------
>> _______________________________________________
>>
>> Taxacom Mailing List
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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
>>
>> Or (2) a Google search specified as: site:
>> mailman.nhm.ku.edu/pipermail/taxacom  your search terms here
>>
>
>
>
>-- 
>---------------------------------------------------------------
>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/>
>------------------------------------------------------------
>_______________________________________________
>
>Taxacom Mailing List
>Taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu
>http://mailman.nhm.ku.edu/mailman/listinfo/taxacom
>
>The Taxacom archive going back to 1992 may be searched with either of these 
>methods:
>
>(1) http://taxacom.markmail.org
>
>Or (2) a Google search specified as:  site:mailman.nhm.ku.edu/pipermail/taxacom  
>your search terms here
>
> 

-- 
---------------------------------------------------------------
Pete DeVries
Department of Entomology
University of Wisconsin - Madison
445 Russell Laboratories
1630 Linden Drive
Madison, WI 53706
TaxonConcept Knowledge Base / GeoSpecies Knowledge Base
About the GeoSpecies Knowledge Base
------------------------------------------------------------