The Beatles 3000 — An Exercise in Historical Drift Based on Incomplete Records
Scottie Pippen was a Beatle? Scholars a thousand years from now might just find evidence to suggest as much.
Scientific Papers Named After Movies and Songs — Variations Abound in Google Scholar
Authors use movies and songs to inspire the titles of their papers, often to unintentionally silly effect.
Gladwell Tackles College Rankings: The Perils of Comprehensive Heterogeneous Systems
Why do smart people continue to seek simple rank-order listings of inherently complex phenomena?
SOAP Survey Requires Clean Interpretation of Data
Full of experimental biases and important omissions, what can be learned from the Study of Open Access Publishing (SOAP) survey of scientists?
Should Our Information Experiences Be Dependent or Independent?
John Battelle wonders if we’re painting ourselves into a corner with crude tools of identity. Instead, is there another way?
The Healthy, Wealthy Corner — What 200 Years of Scientific Progress Can Do
While we can tied up in the minutiae of scientific reporting and pursuits, the grand overall effect is impressive, as this video shows.
When Fraud Hits Medical Science: The Decade of the Vaccine-Autism Scandal
Now that the vaccine-autism link has been shown to be based on a fraud, will ego continue to trump humility in the face of evidence?
Morality and Economics: Is a Trapdoor Opening Beneath Open Access?
With the economic benefits of open access open to reinterpretation, will the moral benefits prove sufficient to withstand the coming scrutiny? And will it all begin a race to the bottom?
We Are All Cyborgs Now — The Humans At the Center of Technology
Extending our mental lives and creating communication wormholes — in addition to carrying more than we ever thought we could — is all the result of becoming cyborgs.
Why Is the Internet Considered to Be "Artificial"?
The artificiality of Internet inventions and experiences is about novelty, not artificiality. We’ve always been pretenders.
The Decline Effect Postulate Fails to Find Its Theory
The truth isn’t disintegrating, but perhaps weaker or ad hoc theoretical frameworks are dissolving more quickly these days.
Michael's Pick for 2010: The Disruption (or Not) of Scientific Publishing
Why hasn’t scientific publishing been disrupted? The question created one of the year’s most-read posts.
Phil's Pick for 2010: The Unintended Use of a Blog Post
A traffic phenomenon from a post about PLoS ONE may indicate that impact factors are more important to authors than PLoS believes.
The Future Is Not a Zero-Sum Game
The false premise of replacement means the future isn’t destructive, just additive.
Anxiety and Clichés About the Digital Generation? It's Still the Economy, Stupid
A recent New York Times Magazine feature plays off fears that the next generation is prone to distraction and underachievement. The facts, and an apparently superior media outlet, argue otherwise.