Comment by dsqrt | Hacker News Reader

Comment by dsqrt | Hacker News Reader

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As somebody in the academia, I would see comments as potentially very dangerous. A comment system could be very easily abused by established researchers in some areas to prevent others from entering their niche sub-field. Do not get me wrong: the majority of scientists I know have very good professional integrity. However, I have also witnessed cases where established professors tried in all possible ways to prevent people from competing with them by discrediting or delaying the publication of very solid science. The arXiv as it is now is a great equalizer, because papers are presented without any string attached and this gives a chance to everyone (or at least to experts) to judge the quality of the various works without pre-conceptions.

As a fictitious example of what could go wrong. I am a theoretical astrophysicist. I am not established (I am not a tenured professor). Suppose that I come up with a good model to explain some astronomical observations. What I would want to do is to write a paper directed to my astronomers colleagues explaining how my model works and why it is better than competing models. I want to convince them to work with me to analyze their data. As it is now, I would post it on the arXiv, the astronomers would probably find it, read it and evaluate it. However, if the arXiv had comments, a single negative review by a more established theoretical astrophysicist would be enough to discourage any astronomer from even reading my paper. Remember that in the astro-ph section of the arXiv there are of the order of 100 new papers per day and we can realistically read only 1 or 2 papers per day on average. In this situation, the chances of my work being completely ignored because of that one comment would be very significant.

I think that the current channels for commenting on scientific work, private email and/or rebuttal papers, are perfectly adequate.

"A single negative review by a more established theoretical astrophysicist would be enough" to discredit his opinion completely if your methods and results prove useful to the community. And besides, he can do that anyway if your paper happens to fall in his hands for review, which is a much more vicious system, because all the backstabbing happens in private. I disagree with your premise here.

I think his point is that, because of that negative comment his methods and results will never actually put to the test of whether they will be useful to the community; however, given the volume of new papers coming out it is unlikely for that paper to be picked up by the community as is, with or without comments. The best way to get people interested is in establishing direct relationships (ideally in person: go present at a relevant conference, engage with people in the community).

> I disagree ...

With due respect, do you have experience inside the world of theoretical astrophysics research or something similar? Do you know how it actually works or are you speaking ... theoretically (ahem)?

Just immagine having to scan through 100 articles every day looking for new ideas. You find something that sounds interesting from somebody you do not know personally (happens to me all the time). The topic is of your interest, but you are not necessarily an expert of that particular subfield (because you are an observer, a "user" of models, not a "developer"). Judging its quality would take away one day of your work. Clearly, if there is a comment from a famous established professor saying that the work is wrong, you will happily forget about it.

It is also true that a famous professor can backstab you when reviewing your paper. But, first of all, your work is already on the arXiv, so everybody already had a chance to form their own opinion. Secondly, in a peer review process the reviewer cannot arbitrarily reject papers. It does not work like that. He/she has to provide good motivations for his/her recommendations. Reviewers can also be challenged to the editors, who can ask for second or third opinions.

Finally, as others commented, to truly disseminate your work you need to go out and engage the community, giving seminars and talks. I couldn't agree more with this. My issue with that, and I talk as a privileged because I work in one of the top Universities in the USA, is that going to conferences, giving seminars and so on, is way easier if you come from one of the top places. You have funds for traveling, you had a lot of chances to network with the right people (when they visited your institution, for example) and so on. It is much more difficult if you come from lesser known groups or from abroad. The system as it is now already strongly favors people working in the top research Universities in the USA and Canada.

The arXiv is great because it puts everybody at the same level. It ensures that the best ideas have a chance to come out, independently from their origin. I wouldn't want the scientific discussion to be dominated by few loud voices.

> The arXiv is great because it puts everybody at the same level. It ensures that the best ideas have a chance to come out, independently from their origin.

With arXiv as a basis for comparison, what is your impression of what the other / older methods of dissemination overvalue and undervalue? For example, my impression is that the other methods favor top U.S. research institutions, but maybe that's realistic; maybe the older methods actually undervalue top institutions (despite my egalitarian fantasies). Maybe gender or experience or position or scope or novelty or other things are over/undervalued.

I do notice that in scientific research, institution is almost a surname in people's identities. It's always 'Jane Doe of Harvard'; it seems like it might as well be 'Jane Doe Harvard'.

I wouldn't say that traditional journals in my field are biased in favor of top U.S. research institutions. The bias comes from the readers. Someone reading articles that are not directly connected with their research has a hard time judging whether the results are solid or not. It is unfortunately natural that scientist, often without even realizing it consciously, end up using proxies, such as the author's affiliation, when evaluating papers. My worry is that adding comments to the arXiv might institutionalize these biases and contribute to the formation of a more closed and elitist scientific community.

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