

How Memories Are Made, And Recalled - edw519
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/09/080908101651.htm

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mechanical_fish
This is a very good article, but in reference to what I was saying the other
day...

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=304624>

... this is still not science. This article is just metascience. I'm still cut
off from the real scientific literature. I can't see their original figures. I
don't know how they pinpointed individual neurons with their probes. I don't
know the estimated error of their technique. I don't know whether their sample
seems to be large enough, or if there's an obvious bias in it. I can't read
their caveats. I can't find out how this relates to the work of their peers,
because I can't look up their chain of references.

To fix this I have to pay _Science_ $10 for the right to read their article
_for one day_ (presumably the unspoken assumption is that I will print it
out), or $150 for a year of _Science_ browsing rights. Of course, that only
buys me access to _Science_ , and it's likely that many of this paper's
significant references -- including, most importantly, the earlier and more
detailed publications by the same authors -- are not _Science_ papers, so
they'll cost me extra.

At least MIT hasn't locked their libraries yet, so if I had the time I could
go down to Cambridge and read a bunch of articles from MIT's terminals. Not
sure I can print them, though, let alone file them electronically for future
reference.

All hail PLoS!

