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Comment by martincmartin | Hacker News Reader

Would it help to move away from print journals, to online journals with comments sections so the community can discuss any potential flaws?

Publishing the data seems like it would help, although might not be possible where there are privacy concerns.

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The active, open, free discussion on findings and theories has been regarded as one of the big ideas of modern science. That's what journals were for.

However, for some reason I'm doubtful if the "online comments section" is the most conductive for the behaviour we want to encourage, after witnessing how that particular concept did manifest in the newspapers when they went online (compared to the traditional opinion / to the editor page).

How do you police comments and keep them from turning into an open sewer? Shills for those threatened by the work being disruptive and sock puppets for involved parties already have a long and storied history.

> online journals with comments sections so the community can discuss any potential flaws

Check out PubPeer: https://pubpeer.com/

I would guess that having everything online might help in some areas, if executed well (open-source style), but I wouldn't be too optimistic, as we could end up with something more like the comments section of a major newspaper.

Right now there's a lot of different silos of post-publication comments sections, each with their own benefits and flaws. Leaving comments on PubMed is probably the best way to get your concerns noticed, but PubPeer is popular for its anonymity (though it comes with all anonymity's usual problems, as well.) Journals also publish comments on their own articles, which are vetted for quality but less frequent and rarely read.

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