
Where do scientists comment on publications? - Satifer
It looks like effective platforms for this are virtually non-existent.
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albusce
It all depends on the research group... I see a lot of activity on Facebook
when an interesting paper comes out. Also
[https://www.researchgate.net/](https://www.researchgate.net/) is quite
popular, but mostly for pre-publication discussions. The whole
[http://arxiv.org/](http://arxiv.org/) system is designed to stimulate
discussion before a paper is published.

~~~
Satifer
Thanks for your input.

Right, people tend to bring these up on Facebook, but it's typically a
scattered discussion.

Are there any Facebook Groups in particular that you know of that facilitate
informed, rational discussion?

~~~
albusce
No, I just know that a few research groups have discussions on their FB group.
I guess the problem is that articles are very specialised, and so the number
of people you can discuss with (and that are interested in doing that!) is
quite small. So probably most of the discussion happens via closed
communications means (vis-a-vis chat, email, ...) Of course very high impact
papers are an exception with regards to that. To have a background idea:
[http://www.psmag.com/books-and-culture/killing-pigs-weed-
map...](http://www.psmag.com/books-and-culture/killing-pigs-weed-maps-mostly-
unread-world-academic-papers-76733)

~~~
Satifer
Interesting article.

What I have in mind is the instances when I read a paper (read: dozens of
papers on a refined area), the methods section leaves out 10-99% of the
details, and I spend significant time and effort searching for the details if
they exist at all anywhere.

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elsherbini
Personal blogs and twitter are the main outlets. See
[https://twitter.com/mbeisen](https://twitter.com/mbeisen) and
[http://www.michaeleisen.org/](http://www.michaeleisen.org/) for an example of
an extremely publicly engaged scientist. You can poke around his twitter graph
to see other hubs.

~~~
Satifer
Michael Eisen is fantastic. There's a dramatic drop-off as far as public
engagement of scientists goes.

I'm not concerned only with "public" engagement, but informal discussion
amongst a diverse crowd of academics.

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Satifer
Discussion is paramount to both ideation and understanding. Why don't we see
more public discussions among academics?

~~~
dalke
Are you referring to systems like PubPeer and PubMed Commons?

(Note: a New Zealand company in this field spammed me to get me to sign up, so
that was an immediate "no" to wanting to even name them.)

FWIW, I thought there was already a lot of public discussions among academics.

~~~
Satifer
Yes. The two you mentioned seem fairly outdated in terms of UI/UX and
functionality.

~~~
dalke
HN is also "fairly outdated" in that regard.

But you asked about public discussions, which is a rather different topic.

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mandor
We discuss a lot on mailing lists, live in conferences, and with personnal
e-mails.

