{"id":553,"date":"2008-04-03T16:34:32","date_gmt":"2008-04-03T21:34:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.realclimate.org\/index.php\/archives\/2008\/04\/blogs-and-peer-review\/langswitch_lang\/in"},"modified":"2008-05-17T18:38:40","modified_gmt":"2008-05-17T23:38:40","slug":"blogs-and-peer-review","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.realclimate.org\/index.php\/archives\/2008\/04\/blogs-and-peer-review\/","title":{"rendered":"Blogs and peer-review Blogs y rese\u00f1a de pares<\/lang_sp>"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

Nature Geoscience<\/i> has two commentaries this month on science blogging – one from me and another from Myles Allen (see also these blog<\/a> posts<\/a> on the subject). My piece<\/a> tries to make the point that most of what scientists know is “tacit” (i.e. not explicitly or often written down in the technical literature) and it is that knowledge that allows them to quickly distinguish (with reasonable accuracy) what new papers are worth looking at in detail and which are not. This context is what provides RC (and other science sites) with the confidence to comment both on new scientific papers and on the media coverage they receive. <\/p>\n

Myles’ piece<\/a> stresses that criticism of papers in the peer-reviewed literature needs to be in the peer-reviewed literature and suggests that informal criticism (such as on a blog) might undermine that. <\/p>\n

We actually agree that there is a real tension between a quick and dirty pointing out of obvious problems in a published paper (such as the Douglass et al paper<\/a> last December) and doing the much more substantial work and extra analysis that would merit a peer-reviewed response. The approaches are not however necessarily opposed (for instance, our response to the Schwartz paper<\/a> last year, which has also lead to a submitted comment). But given everyone’s limited time (and the journals’ limited space), there are fewer official rebuttals submitted and published than there are actual complaints. Furthermore, it is exceedingly rare to write a formal comment on an particularly exceptional paper, with the results that complaints are more common in the peer reviewed literature than applause. In fact, there is much to applaud in modern science, and we like to think that RC plays a positive role in highlighting some of the more important and exciting results that appear.<\/p>\n

Myles’ piece, while ending up on a worthwhile point of discussion, illustrates it (in my opinion) with a rather misplaced example that involves RC – a post<\/a> and follow-up<\/a> on the Stainforth et al (2005) paper and the media coverage it got. The original post dealt in part with how the new climateprediction<\/em>.net model runs affected our existing expectation for what climate sensitivity is and whether they justified a revision of any projections into the future. The second post came in the aftermath of a rather poor piece of journalism on BBC Radio 4 that implied (completely unjustifiably) that the CPDN team were deliberately misleading the public about the importance of their work. We discussed then (as we have in many other cases) whether some of the responsibility for overheated or inaccurate press actually belongs to the press release itself and whether we (as a community) could do better at providing more context in such cases. The reason why this isn’t really germane to Myles’ point is that we didn’t criticise the paper itself at all. We thought then (and think now) that the CPDN effort is extremely worthwhile and that lessons from it will be informing model simulations some time into the future. Our criticisms (such as they were) were mainly associated instead with the perception of the paper in parts of the media and wider community – something that is not at all appropriate for a peer-reviewed comment.<\/p>\n

This isn’t the place to rehash the climate sensitivity issue (I promise a new post on that shortly), so that will be deemed off-topic. However, we’d be very interested in any comments on the fundamental issue raised – how do (or should) science blogs and traditional peer-review intersect and whether Myles’ perception that they are in conflict is widely shared.<\/p>\n


\nTraducido por Angela Carosio<\/small><\/p>\n

Nature Geoscience tiene dos comentarios este mes sobre ciencia y blogging, uno m\u00edo y otro de Myles Allen (v\u00e9ase tambi\u00e9n estos correos de blogs sobre el tema aqui<\/a> y aqui<\/a>).<\/p>\n

Mi comentario<\/a> trata de establecer una proposici\u00f3n que es que la gran mayor\u00eda de lo que los cient\u00edficos conocen es \u201ct\u00e1cito\u201d (por ejemplo, no expl\u00edcito o escrito en la literatura t\u00e9cnica) y es ese conocimiento que les permite distinguir r\u00e1pidamente, con precisi\u00f3n razonable, que art\u00edculos nuevos valen la pena leer en detalle y cu\u00e1les no. Este contexto es lo que provee a RC, y a otros sitios cient\u00edficos, la seguridad para comentar sobre nuevos art\u00edculos cient\u00edficos y sobre la cobertura que \u00e9stos reciben en los medios.<\/p>\n

El comentario de Myles<\/a> destaca que la cr\u00edtica de art\u00edculos y la rese\u00f1a de pares debe permanecer en la literatura de rese\u00f1a de pares y que la cr\u00edtica informal, como la que se encuentra en un blog, podr\u00eda desmerecer el art\u00edculo.<\/p>\n

Estamos de acuerdo con que hay una gran diferencia entre r\u00e1pidamente indicar problemas obvios en un art\u00edculo publicado (como el art\u00edculo de Douglass et al de diciembre pasado<\/a>) y hacer un trabajo sustancial y un an\u00e1lisis extra que merece una respuesta rese\u00f1ada por pares. Los enfoques no son necesariamente opuestos (por ejemplo, nuestra respuesta al art\u00edculo de Schwartz<\/a> el a\u00f1o pasado, que dio lugar a un comentario referido). Pero dada la limitaci\u00f3n de tiempo de todos, y la limitaci\u00f3n de espacio del periodismo, se presentan y se publican muchas menos refutaciones comparando con la cantidad de quejas. Es m\u00e1s, es extremadamente raro que se escriba un comentario formal sobre un art\u00edculo particularmente excepcional, dando como resultado que las quejas son mucho m\u00e1s comunes que los aplausos en la rese\u00f1a de pares. De hecho, hay mucho que aplaudirle a la ciencia moderna, y nos gustar\u00eda pensar que RC juega un rol positivo en resaltar algunos de los resultados m\u00e1s importantes y apasionantes que aparecen.<\/p>\n

El comentario de Myles, si bien termina con un interesante punto de discusi\u00f3n, es ilustrado, en mi opini\u00f3n, con un ejemplo fuera de lugar que involucra a RC, un correo<\/a> y el posterior<\/a> seguimiento de un art\u00edculo de Stainforth et al (2005) y la gran cobertura que \u00e9ste tuvo en los medios. El correo original aborda el tema sobre como los modelos ejecutados en el sitio climateprediction.net han afectado nuestra expectativa actual sobre que es la sensibilidad clim\u00e1tica y si se justifica una revisi\u00f3n de cualquier proyecci\u00f3n a futuro. El segundo correo vino luego de un art\u00edculo de periodismo, un tanto inferior, en Radio 4 de la BBC que implicaba, injustificadamente, que el p\u00fablico estaba siendo enga\u00f1ado deliberadamente por el equipo CPDN (Climate Prediction Dot Net, por sus siglas en ingles) sobre la importancia de su trabajo. Hemos discutido entonces, as\u00ed como le hemos hecho en otras ocasiones, si parte de la responsabilidad de art\u00edculos inexactos o exaltados publicados pertenece a la misma prensa o si nosotros como comunidad, podr\u00edamos hacer un esfuerzo por proveer un contexto en dichos casos. La raz\u00f3n por la cual esto no es pertinente a lo que Myles opin\u00f3 es que no hemos criticado en absoluto el art\u00edculo en s\u00ed. En ese entonces pens\u00e1bamos, y seguimos pens\u00e1ndolo ahora, que el esfuerzo del equipo CPDN vali\u00f3 la pena y que cualquier lecci\u00f3n aprendida ser\u00e1 informada a los modelos de simulaci\u00f3n en un futuro. Nuestra cr\u00edtica, tal como era, fue asociada en vez con la percepci\u00f3n del art\u00edculo en parte de los medios y en la comunidad en general. Estos medios no son para nada adecuados para comentar una rese\u00f1a de pares.<\/p>\n

Este no es el lugar adecuado para arg\u00fcir el tema de la sensibilidad clim\u00e1tica (prometo un nuevo correo respecto a eso pronto), de modo que se considerar\u00e1 fuera de tema. Sin embargo, estamos muy interesados en comentarios sobre el tema fundamental planteado: como se interceptan, o como debieran interceptarse los blogs sobre ciencia y las tradicionales rese\u00f1as de pares, y si la percepci\u00f3n de Myles que estas est\u00e1n en conflicto es ampliamente compartida.
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Nature Geoscience has two commentaries this month on science blogging – one from me and another from Myles Allen (see also these blog posts on the subject). My piece tries to make the point that most of what scientists know is “tacit” (i.e. not explicitly or often written down in the technical literature) and it […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1,24],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-553","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-climate-science","7":"category-reporting-on-climate","8":"entry"},"aioseo_notices":[],"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.realclimate.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/553","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.realclimate.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.realclimate.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.realclimate.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.realclimate.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=553"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.realclimate.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/553\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.realclimate.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=553"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.realclimate.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=553"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.realclimate.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=553"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}