C) give the title of your paper.

SCIENTIFIC COMMUNICATION

For scientific research communication is essential. Science is to be characterized as “public knowledge”. In other words the aim of the scientist is to create, criticize, or contribute to a rational consensus of ideas and information. If you accept this as a general notion, you will agree that the results of the research only become completely scientific when they are published.

Our present system of scientific communication depends almost entirely on the “primary” literature. This has three characteristics: it is fragmentary, derivative, and edited. These characteristics are quite essential.

a) A regular journal carries from one research worker to another the various discoveries, deductions, speculations and observations which are of common interest. Although the best and most famous scientific discoveries seem to open whole new windows of the mind, a typical scientific paper has never pretended to be more than another little piece in a large jigsaw - not significant in itself but as an element in a greater scheme. Primary scientific papers are not meant to be final statements of indisputable truths; each is merely a tiny tentative step forward, through the jungles of ignorance.

b) Scientific papers are derivative, and very largely unoriginal because they lean heavily on previous research. The evidence for this is plain to see, in the long list of citations that must always be published with every new contribution. It is very rare to find a reputable paper that contains no references to other research. Indeed, one relies on the citations to show its place in the whole scientific structure.

c) The editing of the scientific literature is a more delicate matter. The author presents entirely false picture of his actual procedure of discovery. All the false starts, the mistakes, the unnecessary complications, the difficulties and hesitations, are hidden. All is made easy, simple and apparently inevitable. Considering all this, external censorship of scientific papers is an essential element of our system of scientific publication. We must be able to rely on the basic accuracy and honesty of what we read in other people’s papers, for we are always using their results in the constructions or arguments for ourselves. The communication problem would be ten times worse if there were no scrutiny by expert referees.

WHY DO SCIENTISTS TALK?

Herman Bondi

There are two main methods for scientists to communicate with each other. The publication of scientific research papers is the method of the greatest long-term importance. For this reason a large number of journals exist throughout the world appearing at more or less frequent intervals, containing original papers submitted by scientists. These scientific journals are the very essence of science. It is through them and through the study of papers by other scientists in detail and at leisure that we can learn to understand each other’s work sufficiently to extend it, to criticize it, to check it, and to communicate it further to our students and colleagues.

The importance of this permanent record of scientific work cannot be overestimated in the growth of scientific subjects, and modern developments have tended all the time to increase this importance. At one time, a hundred years ago or so, a great deal of scientific communication was in the form of books. Some of these, like Darvin’s Origin of Species, communicated ideas of the very first importance to the scientific world at large. A great disadvantage of books, however, is that they tend to rather massive and therefore the writing up of the work usually extends through many years. With the intensive and co-operative efforts of large numbers of scientists, which is the rule nowadays, a far more frequent means of communication is desirable, and provided by scientific journals. For them too, there is the standard of scientific publications that has been established over the years. Few journals will accept a paper unless it is a complete piece of work.

Thus most scientific journals when the author sends them his paper for publication, first send it to a referee, a man making roughly the same field as the author, who is able to judge whether the contribution is an original or duplicated work already published, whether it is likely to be of importance for the subjects to deserve inclusion in the next issue of the journal, whether there are obvious errors that the authors may have not noticed, and finally, perhaps the most important criticism of all, whether the paper is clear.

Another characteristic of the printed record is its impersonal nature. Over the years, a highly impersonal style has grown up in scientific publishing, which from the many points of view is very desirable, especially in order to keep down the emotional overtones that are always present in human co-operation and that are no less common among scientists than among others.

Now, at last, I was approaching the core of my subject, for this other means of communication is talking. Talking not on a platform but in the most informal way conceivable, talking across a coffee table, at a bar, while going for a swim, and so on. It is only by personal talk between scientists that unformed ideas can travel from one mind into another and that the motivation for different lines of attack can be discussed. It is only by talking that a scientist can discover which point of his approach seemingly so clear to himself, others find particularly hard to understand. Of course, for talking personal confidence contact is essential. Unfortunately, many meetings are overorganized with far too much time taken by set talks with little left for the discussions, and hardly any time or energy for the purely informal personal contacts that are so vital.

Не нашли, что искали? Воспользуйтесь поиском по сайту: