The point the blog is trying to make is that science is just one part of the human culture, we scientists are humans after all, and that makes our flaws, biases, misconceptions and in general, our «imperfections» permeate every aspect of the scientific endeavour.  Science, in its neutrality, strives for a better world, a world where knowledge alone is the key to progress, a world where we are capable of working as a team, thinking as a human organism, a world where the sum over all the well-being of all the humans is maximised all the time.

It is very easy, however,  to realise that we do not life in such a world. In fact, in a world full of imperfections, inequalities and suffering the best strategy is, most of the time, to be selfish. Selfishness is in fact one of the keys of our success as a species. Selfishness can help us, as individuals, to obtain fewer competitors and increase our opportunities in life; All this of course at the expenses of our fellow primates. It is, in my opinion, only our culture what overwrites this primal impulse and makes us perform the unnatural task of working as a team. The «unexpected» result begin, of course, and even better chance of survival. In this context, selfishness for me is a natural way of approaching any problem since it benefits the individual, but culture tell us that, on the long run, working as a team no matter how difficult and unnatural that may seem, is a better strategy for the whole group.

In my opinion, the issue of whether a scientists should embarque him/herself in OPEN science boils down precisely to this idea, to this dichotomy. Publishing in OPEN is the equivalent of the cultural overwrite I mentioned before. It is an initiative to have a kind of ‘science on steroids’, where the flow and availability of knowledge is potentiated and the scientific method is let run free – the way it was intended to be. However, a couple of problems can be anticipated in a society that runs only on OPEN science.

I think that the idea of OPEN science is a sound one – the most striking point of the whole seminar was posed in the form of a question in one of IVO’s presentations:

I believe that the credibility of my hypotheses should be directly dependant on a few important aspects. In my opinion, the OPEN-ness of science might not necessarily contribute positively to all of them. For example, an important feature to evaluate the credibility of my research should be its replicability, agreed. OPEN science clearly facilitates the access to databases, but it does not guarantee a proper documentation of the data, nor sufficient collaboration between the parties, and in its most basic formulation it does not guarantee any kind of authorship over the contents of the data bases. This flaw was said, over the lectures, to be suppressed simply by acting «responsibly» – but that couldn’t be more vague.

Another important component regarding the credibility of my results is eloquently put forth by Feynman in the following short video:

 

 

In Feynman words, the credibility of any scientific endeavour could/should be assessed simply by its agreement with nature -that should be the ultimate «measure» of credibility and that is completely irrespective of the OPEN-status of the research. In this respect, I agree that the courage one might need to put him/herself and his/her method under public scrutiny will create a peer pressure that should motivate oneself to be a better, more dedicated, and more rigorous scientists. However, as long as there is an experiment to corroborate your hypothesis, this pressure is always present. I don’t thins OPEN science can cure science, since I don’t think science is broken – (So it should be sold as such) But I agree that it has potential to accelerate its pace an therefore, the possibility should be explored. #IamAnOpenScientistBecause Science is merrier when we make mistakes.