Open access revolutions

Open Access (OA) databases and publications are revolutionizing the storage and communication of scientific results. OA databases of physical and chemical measurements have been available for a long time, thanks to automated procedures of data acquisition and processing, whereas this is still not possible with marine biodiversity data. The pay-per-view policy is being replaced by the pay-to-be-viewed policy, with authors paying the expenses of the OA to their work. The ethical side of OA is clear: the whole world should be able to profit from new knowledge, not only those who can afford it, especially because research is often paid with public funds. Since funding agencies increasingly ask their beneficiaries to publish their work with OA, OA journals with unclear quality standards are proliferating, and some are publishing unreliable results. Private companies, with either pay-per-view (Scopus, The Web of Knowledge) or OA (Google Scholar) policies, rate the outputs of research. Funding agencies (e.g. Wellcome) are experimenting a further development of the OA strategy, launching OA platforms that they manage directly, with signed peer reviews. Similar experiments are being conducted with databases of raw data. Public funding agencies should also fully embrace this policy. OA policies are still developing, but the route towards a more democratic fashion of making the results of scientific research openly available is mapped out

Diversi modi di fare scienza: la grande teoria della vita

La biologia studia una singolarità nell’organizzazione della materia (la materia vivente) e si basa su conoscenze che sono di pertinenza di altre scienze che studiano le proprietà generali della materia, soprattutto non vivente. La mancanza di “leggi” predittive e universali in biologia è spesso presa come un segno di arretratezza della disciplina, in attesa di una sua maturazione. Tali “leggi”, però, non esistono ma i biologi hanno elaborato, e tuttora sviluppano, una teoria che spiega un fatto incontrovertibile: la materia vivente evolve. La teoria darwiniana, riformata più volte, rimane l’approccio unanimemente ritenuto corretto da chi si occupa professionalmente di scienze della vita. La negazione del valore esplicativo della teoria dell’evoluzione non è basata su spiegazioni alternative che non chiamino in causa entità soprannaturali

Scientists can be free, but only once they are tenured

The frenzy for evaluation metrics recognizes the value of research based on the impact factor of the journals that publish the results. Only some areas of science are conducive to publication in the best tribunes. In biology, for instance, organismal biology, or taxonomy, are not very fashionable, whereas molecular or global approaches are trendy. The citation system to measure the quality of a scientist’s work is based on the acceptance of what is published: the more the rest of the scientific community likes it, the higher the value. In this framework there is little space for deviation from norms. Some examples are given here, within the fields of ecology and evolutionary biology, that show how difficult it is to enforce ideas, either new or old, that do not follow mainstream thought. In order to obtain tenure it is advisable to conform to mainstream, and publish your results in journals with high impact factors. New things can be attempted ‘after’ tenure has been granted; but ‘after’ is very often ‘too late’

THE PROPERTIES OF SOME GOODNESS-OF-FIT TESTS

The properties of Pearson’s goodness-of-fit test, as used in density forecast evaluation, income distribution analysis and elsewhere, are analysed. The components-of-chi-squared or “Pearson analog” tests of Anderson (1994) are shown to be less generally applicable than was originally claimed. For the case of equiprobable classes, where the general components tests remain valid, a Monte Carlo study shows that tests directed towards skewness and kurtosis may have low power, due to differences between the class boundaries and the intersection points of the distributions being compared. The power of individual component tests can be increased by the use of nonequiprobable classes.Pearson’s Goodness-of-fit test ; Component tests ; Distributional assumptions ; Monte Carlo ; Normality ; Nonequiprobable partitions

Uncertainty and disagreement in economic prediction : the Bank of England Survey of External Forecasters

This article introduces a new source of survey data, namely the Bank of England Survey of External Forecasters. The survey collects point and density forecasts of inflation and GDP growth, and hence offers the opportunity of constructing direct measures of uncertainty. We present a simple statistical framework in which to define and interrelate measures of uncertainty and disagreement. The resulting measures are compared with other direct measures of uncertainty, nationally and internationally. A significant, sustained reduction in inflation uncertainty followed the 1997 granting of operational independence to the Bank of England to pursue a monetary policy of inflation targeting.Forecast surveys ; point forecasts ; density forecasts ; uncertainty ; disagreement

Biodiversity, taxonomy and metagenomics

GenBank (Benson et al. 2013) is a database that contains genetic sequences of species. Godfray (2007) proposed that metagenomics can replace taxonomy in identifying specimens. Indeed, giving names to specimens is not the primary role of taxonomy, the discipline being devoted to the description of new species and to reconstruction of phylogenies, focusing on both genotypes and phenotypes. So, the use of metagenomics for routinary species identification is a welcome technological aid to the study of biodiversity, freeing taxonomists from the burden of sorting and identifying biological material

Does Empirical Embeddedness Matter? Methodological Issues on Agent-Based Models for Analytical Social Science

The paper deals with the use of empirical data in social science agent-based models. Agent-based models are too often viewed just as highly abstract thought experiments conducted in artificial worlds, in which the purpose is to generate and not to test theoretical hypotheses in an empirical way. On the contrary, they should be viewed as models that need to be embedded into empirical data both to allow the calibration and the validation of their findings. As a consequence, the search for strategies to find and extract data from reality, and integrate agent-based models with other traditional empirical social science methods, such as qualitative, quantitative, experimental and participatory methods, becomes a fundamental step of the modelling process. The paper argues that the characteristics of the empirical target matter. According to characteristics of the target, ABMs can be differentiated into case-based models, typifications and theoretical abstractions. These differences pose different challenges for empirical data gathering, and imply the use of different validation strategies

Economic Performance, Inter-Firm Relations and Local Institutional Engineering in a Computational Prototype of Industrial Districts

Industrial districts can be conceived as complex systems characterised by a network of interactions amongst heterogeneous, localised, functionally, integrated and complementary firms. In a previous paper, we have introduced an industrial district computational prototype, showing that the economic performance of an industrial district proceeds to the form through which firms interact and co-ordinate each others. In this paper, we use such computational framework to experiment different options of local institutional engineering', trying to understand how specific supporting institutions' could perform macro-collective activities, such as, i.e., technology research, transfer and information, improving the technological adaptation of firms. Is a district more than a simple aggregation of localised firms? What can explain the economic performance of firms localised into the same space? Could some options of 'local institutional engineering, improve the performance of a district? Could such options set aside the problem of how firms dynamically interact? These are questions explored in this paper

The Hydrozoa: a new classification in the light of old knowledge

The Hydrozoa, on the basis of embryological, developmental and morphological features, are considered as a superclass of the phylum Cnidaria comprising three classes: the Automedusa (with the subclasses: Actinulidae, Narcomedusae and Trachymedusae), characterised by direct development of the planula into a medusa; the Hydroidomedusa (with the subclasses: Anthomedusae, Laingiomedusae, Leptomedusae, Limnomedusae, and Siphonophorae), characterised by a polyp stage budding medusae through a medusary nodule; and the Polypodiozoa, with complex endocellular parasitic life cycles