Posted
4:40 PM
by Garrett
Turning up the heat on preprint servers
This week's Nature features two news articles on troubles with the arXiv.org (or xxx) preprint server; according to one piece, 22 papers were withdrawn amidst allegations of plagiarism; another story,
Critical comments threaten to open libel floodgate for physics archive, reports on one physicist attacking another's work in a paper posted to the archive, and the implications of such uncensored comments. Paul Ginsparg remarked "We don't want these food fights conducted on a regular basis." An editorial (gleefully?) admonishing preprint server and scientific website administrators about libel law kicks off the issue.
AIP has a service with links to science news stories of general interest. One of the latest is a statement by Steven Weinberg to the Texas Board of Education supporting the teaching of evolutionary theory - in fact, he advocates that no alternative theories (such as creation science) be taught alongside it.
an article about the Sanger centre in London, which evidently has a database of more than two billion letters of DNA; geneticists can search the database freely ...