Saturday
Nov152014
by 
Bishop Hill
Bishop Hill Anonymity in the ivory tower
Nov 15, 2014 Journals Times Higher Education has an interesting article that touches on several subjects much beloved of the BH community, including post-publication peer review and anonymous commenters.
Moriarty concedes that having to reveal their identities even to a moderator could put off vulnerable early career researchers, and he suspects that PubPeer’s popularity – in contrast to some previous experiments in post-publication review – is down to the possibility of anonymity. But he suggests that finding a way to make comments citeable – and, hence, count towards scientific prestige – might warm up some cold young feet.
Reader Comments (14)
Talking of warming up some cold young feet
Just heard an interesting statistic on the money section on BBC News 24 .talking about pensions ,according to Age UK one person in Britain dies every 7 seconds from "heat related conditions" presume they mean hypothermia and fuel poverty amongst the elderly .So how many people has Climate Change killed I wonder.
The alternative method in controversial areas is to promote pluralism. That is to actively funding in dissenting areas of research, along with comparative studies.
The vast amount of taxpayer cash swilling about in standard peer-reviewed publication will make it a very difficult model to change. That is, unless the publishers find a way to increase their take, as they appear to be managing to do with open access.
re: every 7 seconds, unless my arithmetic is wrong that is around 4.5 million people per year, which seems impossible
even if they mean only in the winter months that is still more than 1 million ppl per yr
fuel poverty is bad but is it killing 1 million ppl per year?
seems like the kind of "journalistic fact" that someone made up
@Jamspid minutes , not seconds & context is Winter not all year round, click the link
Jamspid,
I'd go so far as to say that Mann Made Global Warming (tm) will NEVER kill anyone in this country.
Mailman
@Jamspid, Stewgreen
The figures derive from the ONS' Excess Winter Mortality in England and Wales figures. Their estimates for 2102 and 2013 were 25,600 and 31,100, respectively.
In context, around 500,000 people die in the UK each year.
Of course, it's quite easy to pin anything you like on any statistic. For instance, when you die your heart stops, so 500,000 people a year could be dying from heart-related conditions...
Oops correction
7 second or 7 minutes just One person dying in the cold in there own home is one too many.
Problem is not just financial its actually damp housing creating mold fungus causing breathing problems
Lung problems is what is finishing people off .
So Vivenne Westwood telling the poor to eat less and the elderly to put on another Cardigan won't cure it.
Few months ago Ben Pile done a very long and brilliant piece about the Government Green Deal.
Basically Ben said the money spent on roof insulation draft excluder and updating convection central heating boiler etc better spent on a couple of extra nuclear power stations.Ben is right the Green Deal is absolute failure.
Any Tory party / economic think tanks reading this my answer is scrap the Green Deal and instead update the existing housing stock.
Macro Economic remove Vat on all essential building materials and council grants for not just replacing blown double glazing but also new roofs ,replace broken roof tiles ,guttering ,down pipes ,collapsed drains ,repointing .even so far as grants for rewiring re plumbing even replacing scaled up hot water pipes and taps and shower heads.great for employment great for reducing energy usage and "reducing carbon "re yeah whatever.
Reduce health problems and the burden on the NHS.Spend money to save money.
Before you call social services call Bob the registersted builder.All houses have to have an Energy Performance Certificate so why not a Health ,Habitation ,Repairs Certificate.
But the politicians won't do that because its too practical and don't grab headlines. Just try for once putting people before dogma even someone who forgot to check between 7 minute and 7 seconds can see that.
PS Bish please can we have an Edit button.
Interesting article, Bish … but for those of us Americans separated from the Brits by a common language, what is the "BH community" when it's at home?
w.
"but for those of us Americans separated from the Brits by a common language, what is the "BH community" when it's at home?"
Bishop Hill community.
Of course it is …
Thanks,
w.
jamspid
The Preview Post button on the right of the Create Post is your edit button. You can look for mistakes and alter them before final posting.
After living in the UK for a few years, we watch Brit TV programmes, such as the searching-for-a-new/better-home genre sold to TVNZ.
What really strikes us is how tiny the domestic gardens are and how small and badly-finished most existing and new-build houses in the UK, and how limited in style compared with new-builds in NZ. And at least twice as expensive when one does the currency conversion.