Comments on: On Open Notebook Science: A dissenting voice chimes in

By: McDawg

McDawg — Wed, 23 Apr 2008 20:51:02 +0000

Go 4 it PA.

By: PA

PA — Wed, 23 Apr 2008 19:34:19 +0000

I brought this up via a comment on PhysioProf’s post:

You’re probably right - if a human were to attempt to read through a lab notebook from start to finish it would likely be a huge waste of time and effort. In my mind, the reasons for advocating open notebook science are:
1) We can develop search and indexing algorithms to extract the important information from the fluff, and deposit them in a database. As long as the database is searchable and well structured, this would be a very valuable asset - both to the scientists themselves (when writing papers for instance) as well as to the community.
2) In the event that someone is looking for specific information on a certain protocol, they will have easy access to the raw information from someone who has done it before. For instance, my notebooks have weeks of entries in which I am testing different variables in a procedure, and finally one works. These failures are what advocates of Open Notebooks are interested in archiving for other scientists.

On an unrelated note - I’m rather close to Drexel. We should have a Philadelphia area Open Science blogger meetup.

By: Jean-Claude Bradley

Jean-Claude Bradley — Wed, 23 Apr 2008 18:59:36 +0000

It shouldn’t be too hard to find something negative on Open Science or anything else being discussed on any forum :)
The argument that lab notebooks are not interesting to read is very true - but that is not how they are used. If the notebook is properly indexed on Google or any other relevant database, people will read the pages that pertain to their specific query. For reading a narrative of the larger picture, I think blogs (and papers and presentations) are good vehicles and made even better if they link back to pertinent pages in the lab notebook.
Also the people involved in the Open Science (and even more narrowly in Open Notebook Science) are not trying to make converts. We’re just making some noise to find each other. If it is not self-evident that transparency is a positive thing, there is nothing we can say to convince anyone.