Why I started this wiki


I believe current forms of scientific publication will eventually be superseded by outlets where news, discoveries and data can be published rapidly and without censorship (aka review; see for example Nature's rejection by induction of a paper showing that the methods that led to a Nature paper's conclusion were plainly wrong), where readers can comment and add relevant links and quality is determined in an emergent way algorithmically and dynamically (making review an ongoing process by everyone interested and qualified rather than a one-time process by 2 or 3 competitors of the writer), and which is a living document, ever updated and interconnected for rapid navigation between related material (rather than a dead relic of the past). Such an outlet would allow scientists immediate dissemination of their ideas and findings, even before they are in a form that the author considers final. My vision is outlined in an essay on the future I see for scientific discourse, which I wrote in September of 2004. I also think that scientists should take the little extra time it takes to write a brief summary of each of their papers for lay readers --most science is, after all, funded by taxpayer monies. This wiki is the closest thing to that I know today. When I get the time to make inroads to develop a better medium, you will hear about it here. So here it goes, an experiment in scientific discourse. And while we're at it, why limit it to science alone? It's an experiment in communication.