Social Media, the Onion Parody — "And Remember, Any Teenager Could Have Done What We Did"
Using your brains to think of an idea and your skills to implement it? That’s the old-fashioned way.
Metrics and Meaning — Can We Find Relevance and Quality Without Measurements?
Putting metrics and altmetrics into perspective can help us separate secondary signals from primary signals, and may lead to a greater appreciation of alternatives to metrics, or alt2metrics.
The Hall of Mirrors — Trying to Explain Why Users Value Free Content Differently
Why would free content be differentially accessed across versions of it, and across publications? A dive into PLoS data leads to a potentially reassuring answer.
Of Confections and Citations, Missteps and Marzipan
An attempt to entice citations from authors leads to a memorable story for the holidays.
A Small Meal — Mini-Cheeseburger Kit Requires Assembly, Only Has 96 Calories
After indulging in Thanksgiving festivities, what better than a small meal, made painstakingly and without all those nasty calories. Best of all, no preservatives!
Thanksgiving, Football, and The Princess Bride — NFL Analysts Drop As Many References As Possible
What happens when NFL analysts embrace a film classic? They probably mean no harm, and are not at all short on charm.
Hat Tip to the Wall Street Journal's Health Blog — and Lessons from the Trails It Blazed
The recently departed WSJ Health Blog taught us all lessons — and this blogger the lesson of standing up for what is clearly a better way of doing things.
PubMed Central's Failures in Handling Conflicts of Interest with eLife
One of the layers of impropriety regarding PubMed Central’s handling of eLife is its mismanagement of conflicts of interest.
How Valuable Is PubMed Central's Early Publication of eLife Content?
What is the likely value of what PubMed Central is providing to eLife by publishing them free online, providing PubMed indexing without delay, and getting them into the market six months early?
What PubMed Central's Drag on Publisher Traffic Could Mean Financially
When you think through all the effects stealing traffic has on online publishing businesses, PubMed Central’s competitive presence looms large — whether you sell subscriptions, ads, or APCs.
Google vs. Gallup — How the 2012 Elections Revealed Weakness in Old-School Polling
Polling techniques that changed with the times proved to more accurately predict the outcome of the 2012 elections. The loser? One of the biggest names in polling.
The Nano World — Microscopes Show Us the Ants' Willie Wonka Land
Looking closely at nature reveals that our world is a world isolated by its scale, not by its reality. At other scales, other worlds exist.
Math and Discipline — Why Nate Silver's Accuracy Isn't About "Big Data"
“Big data” isn’t what the Nate Silver story highlights. It highlights data curation, management, analysis, publication, iteration, and integrity, none of which “big data” guarantees.
More eLife Articles on PubMed Central — The Government Subsidy Continues
More articles are published by PubMed Central at the behest of eLife. It seems taxpayer-funded publishing is just fine for this new group.
Luck, Superstitions, and Rationality — Black Cats, Broken Mirrors, Ladders, Salt, and Umbrellas
Common sense of yesteryear is sometimes expressed as “luck.” Would we do better if we made modern common sense “lucky” as well?