On Thu, Sep 15, 2011 at 7:54 AM, Matthew Jadud <mja...@allegheny.edu> wrote:
> 2011/9/14 C. Titus Brown <c...@msu.edu>:
>> Quoting from his post,
>>
>> """
>> These results suggest that undergrads doing OSS for a course are still
>> providing a service and are likely still gaining good experience working on a
>> larger code base, but they’re unlikely to become part of the established
>> developer community.
>> """
>>
>> ...I don't understand why this statement is being viewed so negatively...
>> It's kind of unreasonable to expect many (or even any) students to really
>> participate on a full, complex OSS project based on a class experience.
>> But showing them what exists out there is important.
>
> For what it's worth, we're working on the third revision to a post
> that responds to the piece.
>
> 1. The quote extrapolates from research that does not actually address
> the claims made.
>
> 2. The research itself makes claims that, quite possibly, the
> underlying data does not support.
>
> It does, however, involve close reading of some papers that rely
> heavily on communication network theory. Although we're responding to
> a blog post, we have questions regarding research published in a peer
> reviewed journal, which requires more care in crafting a response. I
> want the response to be accurate and respectful, and I'd like to
> bounce it past the blog author before we post.
>
> Cheers,
> Matt
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------------------------------------------------------
Matt,
Your trust on the reliability of "peer-reviewed" publications
is unfortunately misplaced.
The current peer-review system is a circular vicious cycle
of opinions expressed about other people's opinions, and
only serves the purpose of providing a count of number of
published papers, for the process of scoring of academics
pursuing tenure positions.
If we are looking for the certitude that the scientific method
offers, we must demand access to the original data, and
access to the means for reproducing the analysis.
In the absence of open data, and reproducibility verification,
"peer-view" is an empty practice that only delivers the a
deceitful shadow of certainty, disguised on an air of authority.
Your opinions in items (1) and (2) in your email are as
arbitrary as the opinions expressed in the post that they
refer to, and are actually typical of what reviewers
routinely do in today's peer-review process: to express
opinions that are not based on factual data, nor based
on reproducible experiments.
For anyone interested in the real scientific method and in
epistemology, I warmly recommend the reading of the
following books:
"The Logic of Scientific Discovery"
by Karl Popper
and
"Conjectures and Refutations:
The Growth of Scientific Knowledge"
by Karl Popper
Best,
Luis
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