People, not clusters
Surveillance of people with infectious diseases is a public health measure, yet such surveillance can lead to serious injustice. In an editorial in the Amer...
All posts tagged with open science
Biological Anthropology association speaks out on data access
For many years, biological anthropologists have been talking about data access.
Rising Star open science profile
Ars Technica has a very nice long profile of the Rising Star project by Lydia Pyne: “Rising Star found a new species—now it wants to find a new way for paleo...
What anthropology loses when we pigeonhole public engagement as “service”
Today at the meetings of the American Anthropological Association, Caroline VanSickle and Natalia Reagan organized a panel entitled, “Biological Anthropology...
Why is open science important in archaeology?
Are you curious about open science, but don’t really know what it means? The September issue of The SAA Archaeological Record includes an article that review...
New project to scan vertebrate diversity across thousands of samples
Science reports on a new initiative to provide 3D scan data on thousands of vertebrates: New 3D scanning campaign will reveal 20,000 animals in stunning deta...
Is there a trade-off between publication impact and open approaches?
Two Dutch biomedical researchers discuss how they are trying to move their institution away from mere quantity of research and citations, and toward real cli...
Should scientists refuse to review papers that do not make data available?
What should happen when scientists publish work that cannot be replicated?
New footprints from Laetoli and improving the science of fossil context
I’m jazzed this morning because eLife has published a paper by Fidelis Masao and colleagues describing new footprint trails from the famous site of Laetoli, ...
Why the new Wellcome Trust open review journal may be the science publishing future
John Bohannan in Science writes one of many stories about the Wellcome Trust establishing a new open access journal, in which peer review follows the posting...
Peer review under the microscope
The Frontiers Blog has provided a timely review of some of the new models of peer review that are being tried in different branches of scientific publishing:...
How long until paleoanthropologists must deposit data upon submission?
Genetics journals have for years routinely required sequence data to be deposited in a public database at the time that an article is published. Increasingly...
Open peer review: a note from a physicist
I’d like to take note of this post by Sabine Hossenfelder, “Open peer review and its discontents”. She reflects on a growing cultural divide in science betwe...
Thinking of preprints in biology
At the end of 2014, the arXiv preprint server published its one millionth article. Richard Van Noorden reports on the milestone for Nature News: “The arXiv p...
Raymond Dart and the Russian cast connection
I pointed earlier this week to an article by Lydia Pyne about perceptions of Neandertals over the years, and hinted at a second recent article. That article ...
On a scandal in replication
Experimental psychology has recently become embroiled in a controversy about whether replication of high-profile findings should be a serious goal of new res...
Have Sahelanthropus and Orrorin been written out of existence?
Barbara King devoted a recent NPR blog post to highlighting some professional acrimony in Current Anthropology: “Did Humans Evolve On The Savanna? The Debate...
Paleoanthropologists wanted for Rising Star Workshop
Many people all over the world followed the Rising Star Expedition as excavation proceeded through November of last year. If you haven’t checked it out, the ...
Rising Star Expedition: Into the collection
Rising Star team advance scientist Elen Feuerriegel has another new post on the Rising Star Expedition blog, discussing her work with the collection after th...
Rising Star: The view from a caver/scientist
Today’s post on the Rising Star Expedition blog is by one of our six advance scientists, Elen Feuerriegel: “The View From a Caver/Scientist”.
Rising Star: What we know and don't know
Today’s blog post on the Rising Star Expedition blog provides an FAQ about the expedition’s results so far: “What We Know and Don’t Know So Far”.
Rising Star: In the hot seat
My first Rising Star Expedition update has been posted on the expedition blog: “In the hot seat”.
Fear and the impact factor
Mark Johnston, editor-in-chief of the journal, Genetics, recently published an editorial decrying scientists’ reliance on “impact factor” of journals to make...
White House to recognize open science
The White House is looking to recognize people who are leading in open science efforts, either by providing free access to data or by using data that is alre...
Open 3-d archive of Kromdraai
A new paper in the Journal of Human Evolution by Matthew Skinner and colleagues Skinner:Kromdraai:2013 announces the new availability of an open archive of m...
Update, March 2013
We want to thank everyone who has assisted with the project. If you’re just arriving here, welcome!
Scholarship and experience outside the academy
The Wall Street Journal has an inspiring story of a hairdresser who turned her curiosity about Roman hairstyles into novel scholarship: “On Pins and Needles:...
"Brittle techniques"
I was pointed to a rant from early last year written by Fred Ross: “A farewell to bioinformatics”.
Crowdsourcing paleoecology
Jacqueline Gill reports on a conference with a provocative organization: “Crowd-sourcing the 50 most pressing questions in paleoecology”.
Open access and Creative Commons
Cameron Neylon comments interestingly in Nature on the intellectual property drawbacks of publications that are free to access but not to reuse: “Science pub...
Bigfoot DNA?
A press release claims the recovery of Sasquatch DNA:
Link parade, 2
Ben Phelan at Slate writes about the recent evolution of lactase persistence: “The Most Spectacular Mutation in Recent Human History”.
Without the code, it's hand-waving
A new post by C. Titus Brown is worth reading: “Anecdotal science”
"We find it hard to see what publication would achieve at this stage"
Theoretical physicist Terry Rudolph shares a story about preprints and the editorial process at a top science journal: “Guest Post: Terry Rudolph on Nature v...
Spreading preprints in population biology
Ewen Callaway reports on the increasing use of the arXiv preprint server by geneticists and biologists: “Geneticists eye the potential of arXiv”. With the ne...
"Hair-pullingly frustrating to read"
Greg Downey and Daniel Lende ponder the rhetorical evils of NY Times columnist Thomas Friedman and why anthropologists should be better writers: “Thomas Frie...
Making a difference via blogging
Paul Knoepfler, a UC-Davis cell biologist, runs a very active blog in which he discusses the science of stem cells. One of his recurrent themes is strong cri...
Mouse brain mapping
This merits some attention: “Neuroscientists reach major milestone in whole-brain circuit mapping project”.
"The print edition of any article is little more than a trophy version"
Jack Hitt writing in the NY TImes writes some thoughts on the way that online post-publication commentary and review are changing the authority of scientific...
A plenary of plenty
I’ve arrived in Portland, Oregon today for the annual meeting of the American Association of Physical Anthropologists. This is really a central highlight of ...
Wiki into journal
PLoS Computational Biology has started a new collaboration with Wikipedia, in which short review articles called “topic pages” will be peer-reviewed, given j...
American Anthropological Association keeps it from the people
Last month, the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy solicited comments concerning open access publication policies for federally funded resea...
Open science interview
NPR’s Science Friday interviewed open science advocate Michael Nielsen last week: “Can science be done without secrecy?” I like the headline.
"Journals seem noticeably less important than 10 years ago."
As ScienceOnline2012 gets underway later this week, the New York Times is running an article about open science: “Cracking open the scientific process”. The ...
A quick look at your Neandertal fraction
The 23andMe blog, the Spittoon, has a description of their new technique to use 23andMe SNPs to estimate any customer’s fraction of Neandertal: “Find your in...
A story behind Manis
A couple of weeks ago, I pointed to new research dating a mastodon kill site from Manis, Washington, to around 13,800 years ago (“Bone of the victim mastodon...
Blogs, academic discourse in economics
Paul Krugman comments on how the growth in academic blogs in economics is a continuation of publication trends that long predate the World Wide Web: “Our blo...
Can Watson navigate the medical literature?
Last week, Computerworld reported that IBM’s famous “Watson” supercomputer is moving to its next challenge: prescribing cancer treatments for the WellPoint h...
Agitating for open science
Cameron Neylon in New Scientist: “Time for total scientific openness”.
The Malapa Soft Tissue Project FAQ
These are a few of the questions that I think are essential to understand our aims with the project and how we expect it will unfold. The future depends on w...
Announcing the Malapa Soft Tissue Project
I am pleased to announce a new open science initiative, focused on a discovery that is unique in paleoanthropology. Together we are going to find out if the ...
Open every box
Fascinating: “Unique Canine Tooth from ‘Peking Man’ Found in Swedish Museum Collection”
Public impact
Alice Bell on public engagement for social scientists and humanists: “Being professional about ‘impact’.”
Open science radiocarbon databases
Last week I wrote a lot about the radiocarbon chronology of late Neandertals in Europe (“Neandertals didn’t disappear before 40,000 years ago”, “Neandertals ...
Open science link
David Dobbs writes about the structural barriers to more open science: “Free Science, One Paper at a Time”. Summing up a large collaboration on Alzheimer’s r...
Opening up paleontology
Ewen Callaway writes in Nature News this week on open access science in paleontology: “Fossil data enter the web period”. I write about this topic quite a lo...
Denisova FOXP2 status
In the Denisova hubbub last month (“Denisova genome FAQ”) I didn’t hear anyone talking about the FOXP2 sequence of the Denisovans. I can’t swear that the pap...
Public engagement
Nature’s Gene Russo has a nice article this week about scientists’ attitudes toward colleagues who do lots of public outreach: “Outreach: Meet the press”.
Genomes unzipped, unzipped
Genomes Unzipped, has finally unzipped: