I had a similar article written once on lawmaking. In general, many fields will benefit from the advances in software-defined collaboration.
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/20140814084517-815484-lawmake...
Retire This Idea: Scientific Knowledge Structured as “Literature”
81–88 of 88 posts
Re: Retire This Idea: Scientific Knowledge Structured as “Literature”
#82It seems the problem is that the author is trying to create a representation of knowledge, whereas research papers are more of a logging of work done. His approach may be a perfect fit for an experiment in meta-research. You could run periodic reviews of articles released in specific topical areas and create summaries of the findings. Any time those findings change, its a git commit, and you can track this change ove…
Exactly. The problem is that papers aren't worth what the rest of the world think they are. Nobody who is working on the cutting edge of a given field give a damn about the papers that are published in the field's major journals. Papers are little more than permanent records of what people talked about at some conference several months before, and through other informal channels even earlier. By the time they're publ…
This and the previous comment are /exactly/ right, especially: "... that's only a reason to improve real-time communication, not a reason to turn papers into real-time communication tools".
Re: Retire This Idea: Scientific Knowledge Structured as “Literature”
#83Earlier quoted context omitted.
can you give an example of any problem in science (not engineering) that is definitely solved?
All that is known in the entire field of mathematics. But yeah, mostly just mathematics. I think sorting algorithms is a solved problem, but you can say that's just math as well.
Even math systems are engineered somewhat: we can always invent a new and better math. It has happened a few times in history.
Re: Retire This Idea: Scientific Knowledge Structured as “Literature”
#84Earlier quoted context omitted.
To me, the main problem with papers in their current shape is that they are required to be more or less self-contained. When one wants to state a result that improves a little bit the knowledge in a well established field, he has to waste time and space stating the definitions and preliminary results necessary to understand his result. This is counterproductive both for the author and the reader interested only in th…
I don't know. I think the act of forming a paper up from scratch is an essential element in the process of research. It really isn't a waste of time and space in the sense that proper research will require these definitions and preliminary results be carefully reviewed by the author anyways. Why not have them type it out for us? Or for their own sake even. A wiki style database of information could be an exciting res…
I completely agree that serious researchers should review definitions and results they are basing their findings upon. But then, I'd find much more reliable an editable reference paper corrected and improved by a significant number of people working in the field, rather than an old-style paper, published decades ago, after a (botched ?) review by a couple of anonymous reviewers, and not revised since then.
This would address also a little bit the problem of notations: if everybody agree and work on the same piece of work, they are likely to adopt the same notations, providing a nice coherence to the user.
A wiki style database has many advantages when it comes to organizing and searching information. In my opinion, though, the editing process should be closer to GitHub's pull request (as advocated by the article), to ensure that everything is properly reviewed before publication.
Finally, a publication scheme like the one I described also address a recurrent issue with traditional citation-based papers: citations are one-sided. It is easy to see which papers one article depends upon, but the converse is hard (unless using specific tools, at least). With collaborative editing and wikipedia-style links between articles, the reader is immediately aware of the latest findings in the field, which simplifies tremendously the bibliographic research.
Re: Retire This Idea: Scientific Knowledge Structured as “Literature”
#85Author here. Delighted to see this near the top of HN this afternoon, and to see the healthy discussion it's provoked. Happy to answer any questions as best I can if you've got 'em.
Are you a scientist? If so, in what capacity? If not, where do your assumptions come from?
My problem with your post is that it seems to be based on a faulty understanding of the actual way things work (compared to some theory on it), and furthermore is a case of 'I'm a software engineer, I can solve anything' without actually understanding the issues. Much like engineer's armchair lawyering, which is always so far off the mark that it's impossible to even intelligently debate, because it's based on so much misinformation.
Re: Retire This Idea: Scientific Knowledge Structured as “Literature”
#86Earlier quoted context omitted.
Exactly. We often have the idea of "solved problem" in science, but very few of them in software development (overgeneralizing a bit, any field of technology). This is probably because science is often about "what" (what is the fastest algorithm for matrix multiplication?), "whether" (does P = NP?), while technology is often about "how" (how to implement matrix multiplication efficiently?). Once you solve a problem i…
can you give an example of any problem in science (not engineering) that is definitely solved?
Well, Newton's laws of motion suffice for non-relativistic motion. Maxwell's equations, I think, suffice for typical electronic/magnetic fields. Judging from all the labs I did or TA'd back then, we have a pretty good handle on friction and inclined planes. While there's a lot of "science at the edges" that's ongoing, much of the everyday, classical things have a suitable solution.
As others have written, modern Engineering could not be done without the existence of such working solutions.
Re: Retire This Idea: Scientific Knowledge Structured as “Literature”
#87I what is missing from the article is an understanding of the incentives of academics. Quite often putting a piece of research "to bed" is the goal. Why? Because any good academic has a long list of things they want to get to. Very few people want to get mired in the (inevitable) problems that arise in a paper for eternity. This is why there are review papers that summarize the state of the knowledge at a given point…
To me, the main problem with papers in their current shape is that they are required to be more or less self-contained. When one wants to state a result that improves a little bit the knowledge in a well established field, he has to waste time and space stating the definitions and preliminary results necessary to understand his result. This is counterproductive both for the author and the reader interested only in th…
There is a tradeoff here. If you want terse, field-specific papers without introduction and/or definition of terms they will be essentially incomprehensible for those not knowledgeable about the field. If you want things to be more generally accessible, a brief (!) explanation of the point and basis of the paper is helpful.
That said, I would like to see papers that actually provide a return for the time spent reading them. Teach me something that I can use if I'm familiar with the discipline. Make sure it's actually generally applicable rather than an artifact of the data. Do proper statistics and/or testing of the idea. Show it's not just an LPU (least-publishable unit) that resulted from running tutorials from the vendor.
There's a tremendous push to publish as it's the currency of academic and much professional life. I've done methodology all my working life, and the good papers are joys to read. They provide insight for new techniques, things which I can understand and apply and build upon. There's test data, so I can check that the paper and any work I do based on the paper is robust.
They unfortunately quite rare. I think editors use me as a hatchet man for me-too papers, or that's all people write anymore. Yeah, the goal is to get one's students trained and employed and the grants obtained but please, please write things that are worth the time of reading them.
Re: Retire This Idea: Scientific Knowledge Structured as “Literature”
#88Earlier quoted context omitted.
Exactly. We often have the idea of "solved problem" in science, but very few of them in software development (overgeneralizing a bit, any field of technology). This is probably because science is often about "what" (what is the fastest algorithm for matrix multiplication?), "whether" (does P = NP?), while technology is often about "how" (how to implement matrix multiplication efficiently?). Once you solve a problem i…
That's just simply not correct - scientific endeavour and the scientific method is an ongoing prospect. You never actually solve anything, instead you refine the parameters in which a given solution is deemed correct. Newton "solved" the equations of gravity, Einstein "solved" them too, and now quantum mechanics is "solving" them yet again. None are wrong, but also none of them make the problem solved. The idea of a…
I should have used a more accurate word than "problem".
There are two sorts of problems in science: coming up with assumptions and answering questions under these assumptions. I was thinking about the second category. Modeling gravity falls in the first category, where problems are a lot like engineering problems - there is no final answer.
However, problems in the second category often have final answers (let's not bring Gödel's incompleteness theorem to the table) once you bring all the assumptions with you. Think about: in classical mechanics, what are the possible planet trajectories? This problem has already been solved, and since it is solved, it is solved for good. Later students can simply learn the solution by heart. You can, of course, insist to go through all the trouble of finding out the answer - that is what physical majors often do anyway - but the point is that you don't have to as long as you trust the science community.
In software development you don't have this luxury. First, you can almost never trust libraries to be 100% bug-free; second, even it really is correct, you always suffer from performance costs from invoking the library. There is no such thing as "performance" in scientific knowledge; indeed, a short proof is better than a long one as long as they are both correct, but they are just as useful in that they show the solution is correct.