ScienceGeist

Imagine using version control to track the process of research in real time. Peer review becomes a community-governed process, where the quality of engagement becomes the hallmark of individual reputations. All research outputs can be published and credited with not an 'impact factor' in sight.

Students need to be given real and significant things from the world to think with and about if teachers want to influence how they do that thinking.

Contrary to commonsense belief, attempts to measure productivity through performance metrics discourage initiative, innovation and risk-taking. The entrepreneurial element of human nature is stifled by metric fixation.

It might style itself as a grassroots movement but citizen science is little more than a cheap land-grab by big business.

Perverse incentives and the misuse of quantitative metrics have undermined the integrity of scientific research.

Staid and conformist, science risks losing its creative spark. Does it need more mavericks, or are they part of the problem?

It took a polymath to pin down the true nature of ‘information’. His answer was both a revelation and a return.

Would it be better to do away with the search for excellence, and to fund science by lottery?