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Comment by o2348diuu | Hacker News Reader

I completely understand the issue of not wanting spam of various sorts broadly defined, but I do think restricting it to academic addresses is a huge mistake. As an established researcher on the verge of leaving an academic institution, but who is still very much interested in research, I'm becoming acutely aware of how cliquey academics is, and how problematic it is for the field and society as a whole.

The assumption that anyone who might have anything important to say would be at an academic institution is extremely dangerous (just as is the problem of access to journals outside of academic institutions, etc.).

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Seconded. I'm not an academic but I deal with academic publishing and I might want to participate.

My suggestion: use ORCiD.org for authentication with OAuth. This is a researcher profile. Most academics have one (or should!). They're free, the service is open. I think it strikes the right balance between barrier-to-entry for spam and accessibility.

How does ORCiD.org itself deal with spam? Seems like they just use a captcha, no?

More about ORCiD for the skeptical: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ORCID

If anyone has any questions I can ask someone from ORCiD to come over here and answer them. They're very open!

I've implemented sign-in using ORCID, and although I support the idea, its UX is far from great, its documentation isn't either, and it also isn't terribly stable (it was down on my launch day...).

I somewhat disagree.

Academic journal papers are meant to be digested by experts in that topic, not the general population. It seems necessary to have a filter on registration to ensure that the platform is useful to these experts. You could imagine the restriction could be relaxed to research institution emails -or- a referral.

Even with a restrictive registration, the platform could still be useful to the a non-expert who is interested in the topic by reading the exchanges between experts.

>Academic journal papers are meant to be digested by experts in that topic, not the general population.

TL;DR: Studies like these need scrutiny from everyone. Not just people that declare themselves experts.

I disagree.The latest E-Cig study says they found evidence of tumors in mice who were exposed to cigarette smoke....What they don't tell you in the abstract is that they used 10mg/ml nicotine E-juice and exposed the mice for 3h/day, for 12 weeks. The highest ratio most people vape at is 9mg/ml. No one smokes them for 3 hours straight. The study failed to include how exactly they produce the vapor, no mention of wicking material or coil metallurgy, temperature, or voltage of the coil. It could very well be that the tumors were cause by combustion of either the coil being heated above it's melting point, the wicking material burning, or the juice being combusted and not vaporized. Even though I'm not considered an expert in tumors or cancer I have learned that this test is flawed is missing information and doesn't really show anything that we as people don't already know "Heating things beyond the combustion point produces byproducts that could be harmful to our health." I can rest assured instead of listening to headlines that didn't bother to read or scrutinize the study. I think studies like these need scrutiny from everyone. Not just people that declare themselves experts.

Let's also be fair...just because I have an academic email address doesn't mean I'm an expert. I could be a janitor at JHU for intent and purposes.

It would be helpful to link the study. Without seeing the paper, I would be cautious of separating the paper and conclusions it draws from a possible news article that has extrapolated or expanded the conclusion actually made in the paper.

> I do think restricting it to academic addresses is a huge mistake

I have to agree. I'm no academic for almost 10 years, now, yet I've spent the last three years working with academics on my free time and it's really frustrating how hard it is to work without a “proper” affiliation. I've had to create my own “lab” (it's just a name, and it's only me) to have my name on posters, but I'm still unable to get access to some services because, well… because I'm not paid for the work I do, I guess.

The academic world seems collectively addicted to credentialism and status. A friend of mine recently went from being a grad student in academic geology to private-sector geology. She's experiencing some pretty severe culture shock.

She's getting paid a reasonable amount. She gets paid overtime. Her opinions are given weight. Her physical needs are taken seriously. She gets credit for her work. She is, in general, treated as an actual human being capable of having expertise and bringing value.

The total result is that she's spent months going "WHY DID NOBODY TELL ME THE PRIVATE SECTOR WAS AWESOME?!"

Perhaps they can add support for alternate emails - sign up with your primary academic email, add a secondary. When a user leaves an institution, they can promote the secondary.

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