Uobičajena interpretacija Hajzenbergovog principa neizvesnosti pogrešna?

[Meho Krljic]

I Njutn je pao, i to od srbske ruke:
 
Formula tačnija od Njutnove
 

Veljko Vujičić objašnjava kako je ponudio bolje rešenje Zakona o gravitaciji od onog koji je dao čuveni Englez i da su njegove rezultate podržale mnoge svetske institucije
 
 
  Gotovo 15 godina rada i istraživanja bilo je potrebno Veljku Vujičiću, članu Srpske akademije nauka i umetnosti (SANU) i nekadašnjem dekanu Matematičkog fakulteta u Beogradu, da kako je zaključeno na mnogobrojnim međunarodnim simpozijuma, ponudi rešenje Zakona o gravitaciji bolje od onoga koje je 1686. godine dao Isak Njutn. Srpski matematičar, u razgovoru za „Politiku”, otkriva kako se zainteresovao za nebesku mehaniku, na koji način je oborio tvrdnje čuvenog engleskog naučnika i govori kako se tokom svog istraživanja suočavao sa ogovaranjima iako niko od onih koji su to činili nije ponudio održive matematičke dokaze za svoje tvrdnje.
– Moje interesovanje za nebesku mehaniku počelo je još za vreme studiranja, odnosno kada sam na Prirodno-matematičkom fakultetu učio i polagao ispit iz istoimenog predmeta. Magistrirao sam na temu „Kretanje tela promenljive mase po autoparalelama”, a taj rad kasnije je prihvaćen i štampan u Zborniku radova SANU. Ubrzo potom odbranio sam doktorsku disertaciju na temu „Kretanje tela promenljive mase i njegova stabilnost”, a u međuvremenu sam boravio na Katedri za teorijsku mehaniku Matematičkog fakulteta moskovskog Univerziteta „Lomonosov”. Iste godine kada sam doktorirao izabran sam za docenta na beogradskom Prirodno-matematičkom fakultetu. Znanje koje sam stekao tokom svih tih godina dozvoljava mi da kažem da sam već tada bio dobro „zagazio” u oblast nebeske mehanike – govori za „Politiku” profesor Vujičić.
Na pitanje kada i kako je odlučio da se „pozabavi” Njutnovim zakonom, odnosno njegovim menjanjem, profesor veli da je to „malo duža priča”. Priznaje da mu ni na kraj pameti nije bilo da menja najveći zakon prirode.
– Duže od tri stotine godina najistaknutiji filozofi prirode, fizičari i matematičari uvažavali su taj zakon. Nisam mogao ni da pomislim da menjam Zakon o međusobnom dejstvu dva tela u vasioni. Ta izmena „iznikla” je sama po sebi iz moje modifikacije klasične analitičke mehanike. U njoj sam zapazio da Zakon o održanju i promeni energije nije tačan za mehaničke sisteme sa promenljivim vezama. Saopštio sam to na seminaru za mehaniku Matematičkog instituta SANU, a potom i na Svetskom kongresu mehanike, a moje izlaganje objavljeno je u mnogim stranim naučnim časopisima – objašnjava srpski matematičar.
Kako je njegova teorija protivrečila predavanjima, radovima i knjigama njegovih kolega, bilo je, kako kaže, logično da počnu osporavanja.
– U želji da svoje tvrdnje neoborivo dokažem, rešio sam da ih primenim na primeru Njutnovog zakona gravitacije. Posle prvog pokušaja, priznajem, usledilo je razočarenje jer nisam dobio formulu Njutnovog zakona. Tek kada sam tome dodao Kopernikove hipoteze i zakone dobio sam traženu Njutnovu formu. To je značilo da je moja formula opštija i tačnija od one koju je dao čuveni Englez. To je potvrđeno na Trećem nternacionalnom simpozijumu klasične i nebeske mehanike, koji je održan u organizaciji Ruske akademije nauka, njenog kompjuterskog centra, Moskovskog državnog Univerziteta „Lomonosov” – navodi Vujičić.
Na sledećem, Četvrtom internacionalnom simpozijumu, takođe u organizaciji najuglednijih institucija, u naučnom komitetu od desetak imena našlo se i ime našeg sagovornika i njegova formula sile gravitacije.
– Opšte je poznato iz prakse i osnovnih znanja iz mehanike, kao i sporta, da će se predmet, kada ga vučete sa dve suprotne strane, kretati ka jačoj. Stručnije rečeno, predmet će se kretati u smeru veće sile. Slična je situacija i sa Mesecom, koji se kreće oko Zemlje. Kada se Mesec nađe između Sunca i Zemlje, račun pokazuje da je sila, računata po Njutnovoj formuli, približno dva i po puta veća od sile kojom Zemlja dejstvuje na Mesec. To je paradoks. Kada se računa po mojoj formuli, dobija se da je sila Zemlje, koja dejstvuje na Mesec, gotovo četiri puta veća od sile Sunca. Ovaj dokaz je objavljen u jednom od najprestižnijih svetskih matematičkih naučnih časopisa – objasnio je profesor.
Dugogodišnji rad i istraživanja otvorila su srpskom profesoru matematike mnoga vrata: član je Američke akademije za mehaniku, Evropske akademije nauka, Internacionalne akademije nelinearnih nauka...
Ceo svoj život posvetio je matematici. Ni u 83. godini, koliko ima, nije mu teško da pomaže učenicima. Tako će, kaže, biti sve dok ga zdravlje služi.
– Matematika je čudna, uđe u krv i na poseban način obeleži život – kaže na kraju profesor Vujičić.
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Saradnja sa NASOM
S obzirom na naučne kvalifikacije koje ime, Vujičić je pozvan da sarađuje sa američkom svemirskom agencijom NASA. Prilikom posete američkoj agenciji, srpskog profesora je jedan od tamošnjih načelnika pitao ima li „crveni karton”.
– Iznenadio sam se jer je posedovanje „crvenog kartona” značilo da znam neke od najstrože čuvanih tajni. Bio je oduševljen mojom teorijom o gravitaciji koja se razlikovala od one koju je postavio Njutn, a pohvalio je i moje matematičko znanje – kaže Vujačić.
  Miroslava Derikonjić objavljeno: 22.10.2012. 

[Josephine]

http://www.robertlanzabiocentrism.com/is-death-an-illusion-evidence-suggests-death-isnt-the-end/
Is Death An Illusion? Evidence Suggests Death Isn’t the End

Consider the famous two-slit experiment. When scientists watch a particle pass through two slits in a barrier, the particle behaves like a bullet and goes through one slit or the other. But if you don’t watch, it acts like a wave and can go through both slits at the same time. So how can a particle change its behavior depending on whether you watch it or not? The answer is simple – reality is a process that involves your consciousness.

BBC Horizon 2011 What is Reality HDTV

[mac]

Lepa emisija, ali se smrt ne spominje ni u kakvom kontekstu, pa ni da je iluzija. Jedino što bi se moglo interpretirati kao "iluzija" je teorija da su fenomeni koji se dešavaju u ovom svemiru zapravo projekcije nečega što se dešava izvan svemira. U tom smislu čitav svemir je projekcija, i stoga iluzija, ali to nema veze specijalno sa smrću.

[Josephine]

ta, to je teorija svega. ima veze sa svačime, a najviše sa eksperimentom koji sam citirala. 
i najviše sa smrću;)

pa paralelne dimenzije? umreš u ovoj, u drugoj ne.

[mac]

Ovo je emisija o fizici, a smrt spada u metafiziku. Eksperiment se spominje u emisiji, ali nema spomena o smrti. Nema zaključaka o smrti. Nema primisli o smrti. Nema veze sa smrću. Kad povezuješ smrt i ovu emisiju činiš nonsens, i to me iritira. Molim te zato da staneš.

[Josephine]

 

mac, reaguješ iz ega, a danas mi je dosta ljudi koji tako reaguju.

ako nisi u stanju da vidiš vezu koju vidim ja, mislim da bi bilo lepo da prećutiš, a ne da pišeš nadmene poruke i govoriš mi da sam počinila nonsens. isto i ja mogu da kažem za tebe, jer ne vidiš očiglednu vezu (niti si, izgleda, pročitao lordov tekst (koji se bavi istim temama kao dokumentarac, gde je smrt samo povod, način da se čitaoci privuku da pročitaju tekst), niti si shvatio dokumentarac).

pročitao si naslov teksta, odgledao film, pomislio kako se smrt nigde ne pominje i rešio da mi to natrljaš na nos. površno i pomalo bezobrazno, moram da ti kažem.


deo teksta koji nisi pročitao:

Until we recognize the universe in our heads, attempts to understand reality will remain a road to nowhere.
Consider the weather ‘outside’: You see a blue sky, but the cells in your brain could be changed so the sky looks green or red. In fact, with a little genetic engineering we could probably make everything that is red vibrate or make a noise, or even make you want to have sex like with some birds. You think its bright out, but your brain circuits could be changed so it looks dark out. You think it feels hot and humid, but to a tropical frog it would feel cold and dry. This logic applies to virtually everything. Bottom line: What you see could not be present without your consciousness.
In truth, you can’t see anything through the bone that surrounds your brain. Your eyes are not portals to the world. Everything you see and experience right now – even your body – is a whirl of information occurring in your mind. According to biocentrism, space and time aren’t the hard, cold objects we think. Wave your hand through the air – if you take everything away, what’s left? Nothing. The same thing applies for time. Space and time are simply the tools for putting everything together.
Consider the famous two-slit experiment. When scientists watch a particle pass through two slits in a barrier, the particle behaves like a bullet and goes through one slit or the other. But if you don’t watch, it acts like a wave and can go through both slits at the same time. So how can a particle change its behavior depending on whether you watch it or not? The answer is simple – reality is a process that involves your consciousness.

[mac]

Da si stavila samo link ne bih ništa rekao, ali postavila i emisiju. Povezala si ih. Na linku nema videa, znači ti si to uradila. Naterala si me da potrošim ceo sat proveravajući kako je moguće da ozbiljni ljudi pričaju o metafizičkom pojmu u emisiji o fizici. Gle čuda, to se nije desilo. Nisam uludo potrošio vreme, dobra je emisija, ali nema veze sa tekstom nekog biologa koja kaže da je u biologiji ključ za teorija svega. Neću bre da ćutim, kad nema logike.

[mac]

A pogledajmo i šta drugi kažu o dr. Robertu Lanzi:

http://www.rationalape.com/2011/01/no-criticism-in-lanzaland.html
Lanza cenzuriše kritičke komentare na svom blogu. Pročitaj šta je obrisao, jer i ja mislim isto što tu piše.

http://nirmukta.com/2009/12/14/biocentrism-demystified-a-response-to-deepak-chopra-and-robert-lanzas-notion-of-a-conscious-universe/
Prilično detaljna analiza celog tog biocentrizma. Lanza pogrešno interpretira fizičke fenomene, kao pravi nju-ejdževac.

http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2007/03/robert_lanza_do/
Novinar Wireda poštuje Lanzu kao biologa, ali kad Lanza počne da iznosi teorije o tome da je realnost konstrukt naše kolektivne mašte, ili šta god, sve što može da izusti je "Dude! What?"

Nije Lanza baš neki autoritet za fiziku.

[Josephine]

ozbiljni ljudi pričaju o metafizičkom pojmu u emisiji o fizici.

 

ma daj, mac. lepo sam ti natuknula da pročitaš tekst koji je lord postovao. još sam ti i ceo isečak, koji ima direktne veze sa emisijom, citirala. šta ja imam sa tim što ti ne kapiraš?? 


lanzu je postavio lord, a ne ja. ja sam linkovala bbc-jev dokumentarac i pronašla vezu. govori se o (poreklu, prirodi) realnosti i u jednom i u drugom.


i lepo sam ti rekla da je smrt samo način da se privuku čitaoci i zato je lanza tako nazvao tekst. da nisi zaslepljen svojim egom toliko, možda bi i mogao da uočiš trag kritike na lanzin račun. 

[mac]

Stalno spominješ taj ego, ne znam otkud to. Ja tebi nikad nisam delio epitete, jer to je za mene balast u komunikaciji.

Sad više ne znam, da li ti kritikuješ ili podržavaš teoriju biocentrizma Roberta Lanze? Teraš me da čitam teoriju svega od biologa, kao da ga podržavaš, a ovamo pričaš o tragovima kritike. Na kojoj si ti poziciji?

[Josephine]

i meni je optužba za nonsens balast u komunikaciji. šta je to ako nije etiketa?

prepotentnost u komunikaciji, takođe.

ne pravi se nevinašce, mac.


ni tekst nema direktne veze sa naslovom.

i, na kraju, moja pozicija u celoj priči je da nije moja krivica što ti ne kapiraš.

[mac]

Bio sam malo zaludan, pa sam našao u emisiji deo koji se tiče našeg eksperimenta. Deo počinje od 17:45. Prvo ide opis i objašnjenje. Imamo dva proreza i pojedinačne fotone, i čovek bi očekivao dve trake svetlosti na ploči, ali nisu dve nego su tri (narator kasnije kaže "multiple stripes", ali u svakom slučaju nisu dve). U emisiji su predstavili kao da je bog zna kako začuđujuće, i sam fizičar se čudi zbog tri trake. To se oni čude zbog laika, i onih koji ne znaju ništa o kvantnoj fizici. To će postati jasno kad fizičar da svoj poslednji komentar. Ali, sad idemo dalje.

Sad stavljamo detektore pre proreza. To počinje od 21:30. Narator objašnjava da kad staviš detektore onda su dve trake, kad ukloniš detektore onda je više traka, i primećuje "Rather astonishingly it seems that we can change the way the reality behaves just by looking at it". Da li su ljudi posmatrali foton? Ne, detektor je posmatrao. Da li ljudi uopšte mogu da vide foton? Ne, čitava aparatura je dobro skrivena od dnevne svetlosti i ljudskih pogleda. I ne samo to, nego čak nije ni fizičar napravio taj komentar nego narator. Ali, sad idemo dalje.

Šta kaže Nemac, fizičar? Prvo kaže da ne znamo šta se tačno dešava na putanji fotona, "We cannot describe that with our everyday language". Ono što je prećutano je da možemo opisati jezikom kvantne fizike (videti sledeći pasus). Zatim je prepričao raspravu između Ajnštajna i Bora o tome kako je nemoguće dokazati da Mesec postoji ili ne postoji kad ga niko ne gleda. Ali nije spomenuo oči, jer fizičari ne rade s očima nego s idejama i aparaturama. Kako treba interpretirati to "gledanje Meseca"? Pa, ako ostatak svemira nema informaciju o Mesecu, ni preko fotona (elektro magnetne sile), ni preko gravitacione sile, ni preko ičega drugog što fizičari uzimaju u obzir (a to je bukvalno sve), i time je Mesec potpuno de fakto izolovan od ostatka svemira, onda da li Mesec postoji? Takav uslov je udaljen od pukog posmatranja Meseca ljudskim očima, kao nebo od zemlje.

Šta dalje kaže fizičar? Ono što sam i ja pričao, samo treba razumeti. "Quantum physics is an exiting theory because it is extremely precise, it is mathematically beautiful and it describes everything. It just doesn't make sense". Fizičar je upravo rekao da kvantna teorija objašnjava navodnu misteriju fotona i proreza. "It describes everything". A onda je i rekao da je objašnjenje toliko laicima neobično, da nema smisla. Ali nema smisla samo laicima. Kvantnim fizičarima ima smisla.

D... Ti si rekla da fizičar kaže isto što i Robert Lanza. To naprosto nije istina. Objasni se sad.

[Stipan]

[Josephine]

Pa, ako ostatak svemira nema informaciju o Mesecu, ni preko fotona (elektro magnetne sile), ni preko gravitacione sile, ni preko ičega drugog što fizičari uzimaju u obzir (a to je bukvalno sve), i time je Mesec potpuno de fakto izolovan od ostatka svemira, onda da li Mesec postoji? Takav uslov je udaljen od pukog posmatranja Meseca ljudskim očima, kao nebo od zemlje.

Šta dalje kaže fizičar? Ono što sam i ja pričao, samo treba razumeti. "Quantum physics is an exiting theory because it is extremely precise, it is mathematically beautiful and it describes everything. It just doesn't make sense". Fizičar je upravo rekao da kvantna teorija objašnjava navodnu misteriju fotona i proreza. "It describes everything". A onda je i rekao da je objašnjenje toliko laicima neobično, da nema smisla. Ali nema smisla samo laicima. Kvantnim fizičarima ima smisla.

D... Ti si rekla da fizičar kaže isto što i Robert Lanza. To naprosto nije istina. Objasni se sad.

I ovaj fizičar dekonstruiše realnost na isti način kao i Lanza (i ne samo on). Ja sam u toj dekonstrukciji videla vezu. Postojanje meseca zavisi od toga da li ga gledamo. The Moon is not there when nobody is looking.
To je isto što i kada gledamo u foton - ponaša se drugačije, nego kada ne gledamo.

Sada ja ne umem da ti objasnim bolje, moraćeš da se potrudiš još.

Što se tiče "smislenosti" kvantne fizike, to si ti protumačio da ima smisla fizičarima, ja ne mislim da je fizičar to rekao. Mislim da je rekao da nema smisla kada treba da objasni pojave van polja na kojima zakoni kvantne fizike važe. Odnosno, nekada zakoni važe, a nekada ne (kao i u slučaju fotona). Zato nema smisla. A ne - nema smisla laicima. Nisu svi laici toliko glupi, niti su (svi) fizičari superiorno inteligentni vanzemaljci, pa da samo oni razumeju. To ti je, nekako, vrlo smešan zaključak- Laici ne razumeju, a fizičari da, dakle D. ti i ja ne razumemo, ali to ne znači da ja nisam u pravu. 

[mac]

Pa ne mogu oni u deset minuta da objasne te kvantne zakone, za to moraš u škole da ideš. I naravno, kvantni zakoni upravo važe u slučaju fotona, to jest važe svuda i uvek, ali su u slučaju fotona najuočljiviji. Lepo je fizičar rekao "it describes everything", i tu ja nemam više ništa ni da dodam ni da oduzmem. Ko sluša razumeće.

A vidim i dalje stojiš na uverenju da je ljudsko oko to koje uobličuje svemir. I posle svega napisanog. Pa dobro, bar će drugi moći da donesu svoj sud.

[Josephine]

"it describes everything"

 

ma daj, mac...  ti veruješ da je u univerzumu sve objašnjeno? pa, kako sad da raspravljam sa tobom?

[Josephine]

A vidim i dalje stojiš na uverenju da je ljudsko oko to koje uobličuje svemir.

Po 100. put. Interpretirala sam tekst i dokumentarac. Ti ih tumačiš potpuno drugačije. Da, i tekst i dokumentarac pričaju o dekonstrulciji realnosti, tako da ona zavisi od ljudske svesti. Ja to ne tvrdim, ja to ne mogu da znam. Ja sam samo opisala tekst i dokumentarac, jer si me ti na to naterao. Nisi video vezu koju sam ja videla, pa sam ti pojasnila vezu. To je samo još jedna teorija "svega". 

[Meho Krljic]

"it describes everything"

 

ma daj, mac...  ti veruješ da je u univerzumu sve objašnjeno? pa, kako sad da raspravljam sa tobom?

Zar se it describes everything ne odnosi na partikularni eksperiment i njegove nalaze? Ne na život, univerzum i sve ostalo.

[scallop]

Ma, Meho, pusti Maca. Valjda će isplivati. Ako ne ispliva, ja ću ga udaviti.

[Josephine]

Zar se it describes everything ne odnosi na partikularni eksperiment i njegove nalaze? Ne na život, univerzum i sve ostalo.

Pitajmo to mac-a. Tekst i dokumentarac objašnjavaju realnost. Dakle, vrlo približno objašnjenju univerzuma i svega ostalog.

Nije fer da mi se bilo ko nadmeno obraća, kada me ne razume. Ili ne razume tekst i dokumentarac i ono o čemu govore. Zato je cela frka i nastala.

[tomat]

Tekst i dokumentarac objašnjavaju realnost. Dakle, vrlo približno objašnjenju univerzuma i svega ostalog.

dokumentarac sam gledao pre nekog vremena (pre nego si ga ti linkovala ovde), a tekst (pretpostavljam da misliš na tekst koji je Lord Kufer postavio) sam ponovo pročitao, i u tekstu ne vidim ni jedan deo koji "objašnjava" realnost. ono pitanje da li je nebo crveno ili plavo mi deluje suludo, čovek može da ga vidi kao crveno i plavo, ali to je samo percepcija realnosti, ne znam šta je time hteo da dokaže. takođe nije jasno na šta misli kada kaže "watch". da li misli na čulno posmatranje, ili naučno posmatranje koje može da uključuje i neke detektore, merne isntrumente i slično?

nisam ranije čuo za Lanzu, pa sam probao da se informišem (ne previše detaljno, moram priznati, ali i ovo što sam pronašao može biti dovoljno). njegove ideje fizičari (pa i medicinari) uglavnom kritikuju. najčešća zamerka je da njegove ideje zanemaruju napretke ostvarene u modernoj fizici, kao i da biocentrizam ne može da obezbedi predviđanja koja su proverljiva. te ideje vide kao neprecizne metafore, dok neki smatraju da predstavljaju interesantnu folozofiju (opet, tu se onda neki filozofi bune jer misle da biocentrizan ne zadovoljava kriterijume neophodne da bi se nešto proglasilo filozofskom teorijom). podršku mu pružaju nju ejdž gurui, koji kažu da je biocentrizam u skladu sa drevnim mudrostima.

ako me sećanje ne vara, ni dokumentarac ne "objašnjava" realnost, već samo iznosi neke ideje i potencijalna objašnjenja. mislim, to je debelo otvorena tema, i bilo bi vrhunsko dostignuće kada bi dokumentarni film uspeo sve to da objasni.

[mac]

Ja sam razumeo da si u emisiji pronašla argument u korist biocentrizma. Da li sam to pogrešno razumeo? Ako sam to dobro razumeo onda sam tebe razumeo, i nisi u pravu kad kažeš da te ne razumem. Sad smo trenutno u fazi da ti niti tvrdiš da ljudska svest definiše svemir, niti tvrdiš da ne definiše, ali ono što sigurno znaš je da Bor to tvrdi, citirajući anegdotu sa Mesecom. Bor nije rekao to što ti misliš da je rekao. U rečniku kvantnih fizičara posmatranje nije isto što i u rečniku laika. U rečniku kvantnih fizičara kad god dve čestice utiču jedna na drugu one jedna drugu posmatraju, i u tom smislu svemir sve vreme posmatra sam sebe. Problem je što nigde na internetu ne mogu da pronađem objašnjenje "posmatranja".

Zato predlažem da formulišemo pitanje i postavimo ga na physics.stackexchange.com . Sajt postoji upravo da bi ljudi dobili odgovore na takva pitanja. Ovo je pitanje koje bih ja postavio:

In the debate between Albert Einstein and Niels Bohr this question arose: "Do you really think the moon isn't there if you aren't looking at it?". What is the nature of process of "looking at the moon"? What is the nature of observation? Are human conscious and human eyes required to observe the moon? Is human required for the moon to be observed? When the moon is not observed?

Da li se slažeš da bi dobar odgovor na ova pitanja potvrdio ili opovrgao vezu između biocentrizma i Mesečeve anegdote, a time i vezu između biocentrizma i emisije?

[Джон Рейнольдс]

Postojanje meseca zavisi od toga da li ga gledamo. The Moon is not there when nobody is looking.

Постоји ли твој мозак кад га нико не гледа? Било који унутрашњи орган?

[Stipan]

Baš i nije fer udarati po nekome ko nije u stanju da se brani, zar ne?

[Джон Рейнольдс]

Добила је бан на само 24 часа, одговориће кад се врати. И нема никаквог ударања. Моје питање је сасвим валидно у контексту ове приче, а и Маково.

[Meho Krljic]

Idemo dalje sa rušenjem Hajzenberga:
 
Getting Around the Uncertainty Principle: Physicists Make First Direct Measurements of Polarization States of Light
 
 

Mar. 3, 2013 — Researchers at the University of Rochester and the University of Ottawa have applied a recently developed technique to directly measure for the first time the polarization states of light. Their work both overcomes some important challenges of Heisenberg's famous Uncertainty Principle and also is applicable to qubits, the building blocks of quantum information theory.
 
They report their results in a paper published this week in Nature Photonics.
The direct measurement technique was first developed in 2011 by scientists at the National Research Council, Canada, to measure the wavefunction -- a way of determining the state of a quantum system.
Such direct measurements of the wavefunction had long seemed impossible because of a key tenet of the uncertainty principle -- the idea that certain properties of a quantum system could be known only poorly if certain other related properties were known with precision. The ability to make these measurements directly challenges the idea that full understanding of a quantum system could never come from direct observation.
The Rochester/Ottawa researchers, led by Robert Boyd, who has appointments at both universities, measured the polarization states of light -- the directions in which the electric and magnetic fields of the light oscillate. Their key result, like that of the team that pioneered direct measurement, is that it is possible to measure key related variables, known as "conjugate" variables, of a quantum particle or state directly. The polarization states of light can be used to encode information, which is why they can be the basis of qubits in quantum information applications.
"The ability to perform direct measurement of the quantum wavefunction has important future implications for quantum information science," explained Boyd, Canada Excellence Research Chair in Quantum Nonlinear Optics at the University of Ottawa and Professor of Optics and Physics at the University of Rochester. "Ongoing work in our group involves applying this technique to other systems, for example, measuring the form of a "mixed" (as opposed to a pure) quantum state."
Previously, a technique called quantum tomography has allowed researchers to measure the information contained in these quantum states, but only indirectly. Quantum tomography requires intensive post-processing of the data, and this is a time-consuming process that is not required in the direct measurement technique. Thus, in principle, the new technique provides the same information as quantum tomography but in significantly less time.
"The key to characterizing any quantum system is gathering information about conjugate variables," said co-author Jonathan Leach, who is now a lecturer at Heriot-Watt University, UK. "The reason it wasn't thought possible to measure two conjugate variables directly was because measuring one would destroy the wavefunction before the other one could be measured."
The direct measurement technique employs a "trick" to measure the first property in such a way that the system is not disturbed significantly and information about the second property can still be obtained. This careful measurement relies on the "weak measurement" of the first property followed by a "strong measurement" of the second property.
First described 25 years ago, weak measurement requires that the coupling between the system and what is used to measure it be, as its name suggests, "weak," which means that the system is barely disturbed in the measurement process. The downside of this type of measurement is that a single measurement only provides a small amount of information, and to get an accurate readout, the process has to be repeated multiple times and the average taken.
Boyd and his colleagues used the position and momentum of the light as the indicator of the polarization state. To couple the polarization to the spatial degree of freedom they used birefringent crystals: when light goes through such a crystal, there is a spatial separation introduced for different polarizations. For example, if light is made of a combination of horizontally and vertically polarized component, the positions of the individual components will spread out when it goes through the crystal according to its polarization. The thickness of the crystal can control the strength of the measurement, weak or strong, and determine the degree of separation, correspondingly small or large.
In this experiment, Boyd and his colleagues passed polarized light through two crystals of differing thicknesses: the first, a very thin crystal that "weakly" measures the horizontal and vertical polarization state; the second, a much thicker crystal that "strongly" measures the diagonal and anti-diagonal polarization state. As the first measurement was performed weakly, the system is not significantly disturbed, and therefore, information gained from the second measurement was still valid. This process is repeated several times to build up accurate statistics. Putting all of this together gives a full, direct characterization of the polarization states of the light.

[mac]

Sad ispade da oni ne posmatraju istu česticu u više merenja. Možda sam nešto propustio, ali rekao bih da Hajzenbergov princip nije narušen ako u različitim merenjima mere različite čestice da bi dobili prosek.

[Meho Krljic]

Da, pa koliko ja umem da se razaberem, zaista ne mere istu česticu, nego isti talas i to tako da talasna funkcija od prvog merenja ostane netaknuta/ nekolabirana... Tu su negde...

[scallop]

Što se, bre, mučite? Lepše je - neizvesno.

[Meho Krljic]

Nothing to See Here: Demoting the Uncertainty Principle

“You’ve observed the robbers. They know it. That will change their actions,” says Charlie Eppes, the math savant who helps detectives on television’s “Numbers.” Eppes claims that this insight follows from quantum physics, in particular, Werner Heisenberg’s infamous “uncertainty principle.” Not all mischaracterizations of Heisenberg’s principle are as innocent as Eppes’s. The film “What the Bleep Do We Know!?” uses it to justify many articles of faith in New Age philosophy. Asserting that observing water molecules changes their molecular structure, the film reasons that since we are 90 percent water, physics therefore tells us that we can fundamentally change our nature via mental energy. Fundamentally inaccurate uses of the principle are also common in the academy, especially among social theorists, who often argue that it undermines science’s claims to objectivity and completeness. As Jim Holt has written, “No scientific idea from the last century is more fetishized, abused and misunderstood — by the vulgar and the learned alike — than Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle.”
Why exactly is the uncertainty principle so misused? No doubt our sensationalist and mystery-mongering culture is partly responsible. But much of the blame should be reserved for the founders of quantum physics themselves, Heisenberg and Niels Bohr. Though neither physicist would have sanctioned the above nonsense, it’s easy to imagine how such misapprehensions arise, given the things they do say about the principle, and especially the central place they both give to the concept of measurement.



Heisenberg vividly explained uncertainty with the example of taking a picture of an electron. To photograph an electron’s position – its location in space – one needs to reflect light off the particle. But bouncing light off an electron imparts energy to it, causing it to move, thereby making uncertain its velocity. To know velocity with certainty would then require another measurement. And so on. While this “disturbance” picture of measurement is intuitive – and no doubt what inspires the common understanding exemplified in “Numbers” – it leaves the reason for uncertainty mysterious. Measurement always disturbs, yet that didn’t stop classical physicists from in principle knowing position and velocity simultaneously.
For this reason Heisenberg supplemented this picture with a theory in which measurement figures prominently. It’s not simply that we can’t simultaneously measure definite values of position and momentum, he thought. It’s that before measurement those values don’t simultaneously exist. The act of observation brings into existence the properties of the world. Here we find the seeds of the claims made by some social theorists and found in “What the Bleep Do We Know!?” If reality depends on interaction with us, it’s natural to suppose that objectivity is undermined and that we, from the outside, make reality, possibly with some kind of mental energy.



Bohr, for his part, explained uncertainty by pointing out that answering certain questions necessitates not answering others. To measure position, we need a stationary measuring object, like a fixed photographic plate. This plate defines a fixed frame of reference. To measure velocity, by contrast, we need an apparatus that allows for some recoil, and hence moveable parts. This experiment requires a movable frame. Testing one therefore means not testing the other. Here we find inspiration for the idea that the principle shows that science can never answer everything.
¶But as interpretations of the principle, both views are baffling, most of all for the undue weight they give to the idea of measurement.
¶To understand what the uncertainty principle actually says, one needs to understand the broader physical theory in which it figures: quantum mechanics. It’s a complex theory, but its basic structure is simple. It represents physical systems – particles, cats, planets – with abstract quantum states. These quantum states provide the chances for various things happening. Think of quantum mechanics as an oddsmaker. You consult the theory, and it provides the odds of something definite happening. You ask, “Oddsmaker, what are the chances of finding this particle’s location in this interval?” and the equations of the theory answer, “25 percent.” Or “Oddsmaker, what are the chances of finding the particle’s energy in this range?” and they answer, “50 percent.”
¶The quantum oddsmaker can answer these questions for every conceivable property of the system. Sometimes it really narrows down what might happen: for instance, “There is a 100 percent chance the particle is located here, and zero percent chance elsewhere.” Other times it spreads out its chances to varying degrees: “There is a 1 percent chance the particle is located here, a 2 percent change it is located there, a 1 percent chance over there and so on.”
¶The uncertainty principle simply says that for some pairs of questions to the oddsmaker, the answers may be interrelated. Famously, the answer to the question of a particle’s position is constrained by the answer to the question of its velocity, and vice versa. In particular, if we have a huge ensemble of systems each prepared in the same quantum state, the more the position is narrowed down, the less the velocity is, and vice versa. In other words, the oddsmaker is stingy: it won’t give us good odds on both position and velocity at once.
¶Note that nowhere in my explanation of the principle did I mention anything about measurement. The principle is about quantum states and what odds follow from these states. To add the notion of measurement is to import extra content. And as the great physicist John S. Bell has said, formulations of quantum mechanics invoking measurement as basic are “unprofessionally vague and ambiguous.”
¶After all, why is a concept as fuzzy as measurement part of a fundamental theory? Interactions abound. What qualifies some as measurements? Inasmuch as disturbance is related to uncertainty, it’s hardly surprising that observing something causes it to change, since one observes by interacting. But a clear and complete physical theory should describe the physical interaction in its own terms.
¶Today there are several interpretations of quantum mechanics that do just that. Each gives its own account of interactions, and hence gives different meaning to the principle.
¶Consider the theory invented by the physicists Louis de Broglie and David Bohm, commonly referred to as the de Broglie-Bohm view. It supplements the quantum state with particles that always have determinate positions, contra Heisenberg. Measurement interactions are simply a species of particle interaction. Uncertainty still exists. The laws of motion of this theory imply that one can’t know everything, for example, that no perfectly accurate measurement of the particle’s velocity exists.
¶This is still surprising and nonclassical, yes, but the limitation to our knowledge is only temporary. It’s perfectly compatible with the uncertainty principle as it functions in this theory that I measure position exactly and then later calculate the system’s velocity exactly. But the bigger point is that because of the underlying physical picture, we here know exactly why uncertainty exists.



Other interpretations exist. For example, there are the “collapse” theories associated with the physicist Giancarlo Ghirardi. In these theories the quantum state abruptly changes its development (“collapses”) when big things interact with small things. Here fields of mass interact with one another. And in the “many worlds” picture of the physicist Hugh Everett III, all the possibilities given odds by the oddsmaker come to fruition, but in parallel worlds. Here the abstract quantum state is regarded as physical, and interactions are connections that develop between different bits of this strange reality.
¶All of these interpretations have their pros and cons, but in none do observers play a fundamental role. You and I are big clumps or aspects of the basic stuff. Measurement is simply a type of interaction among those types of stuff, no different than a basketball’s redirection when bounced off a patch of uneven gym floor.
¶Once one removes the “unprofessional vagueness” surrounding the notion of measurement in quantum physics, the principle falls out as a clear corollary of quantum physics. Weirdness remains, of course. The stingy quantum oddsmaker is genuinely odd. But all the truly wild claims – that observers are metaphysically important, that objectivity is impossible, that we posses a special kind of mental energy – are the result of foggy interpretations made even less sharp by those wanting to validate their pet metaphysical claims with quantum physics.
¶To prevent future temptation to misuse, I urge that we demote the uncertainty principle. If Pluto can be reclassified as a dwarf planet, then surely we can do something similar here. Going forward, let’s agree to call the uncertainty principle the “uncertainty relations” or even the less provocative “quantum standard deviation constraints.” Not many people outside of a lab are likely to invoke a principle with a name like this.
¶And that’s probably a good thing.

[Meho Krljic]

Mislim da je ovaj topik prikladno mesto pošto smo na njemu imali više primera skepticističkog odnosa prema naučnim "istinama" a, reklo bi se bez pravog shvatanja šta u nauci "istina" podrazumeva i sa jednim impliciranim sentimentom da komentar laika koji se interesuje za temu i komentar stručnjaka koji provodi godine u temi nekako imaju istu težinu.

Naime, Popular Science, magazin koji postoji skoro vek i po je odlučio da ukine komentarisanje tekstova na svom sajtu. Pre neki dan sam na topik "Mehmete, reaguj" okačio zanimljivu studiju evolucije Internet komentara u kojoj se diskutuje o tome je li trenutni način komentarisanja (to da su komentari ispod glavnog teksta i da je time svako ko komentariše po difoltu postavljen u inferioran odnos u poređenju sa samim autorom) zapravo uzrok toga da komentari budu nabijeni gnevom i resantimanom (mada se i tu priznaje da je autor često neko ko je posvetio mnogo vremena i truda materiji a komentatori kako koji) i da li bi zamenjivanje komentara koji idu hronološki ispod teksta, anotacijama u samom tekstu koje bi se odnosile na partikularne delove teksta bilo bolje jer bi ljude nateralo da se bave konkretnim stvarima itd.

E, sad, Popular Science, videćete dole, veli da im je preko kurca ne samo čišćenja sekcije za komentare od spambotova i trolova, nego i od stalnog dotoka lupetanja ljudi koji misle da o naučnim temama mogu da pričaju bez prolaska kroz materiju, bez usvajanja znanja i disciplinovanog kritičkog odnosa prema istima, dakle ljudi koji misle da je skepticizam isto što i nasumičnost.

I, dok ja razumem njihov sentiment, mislim da je malo i opasno da magazin koji slavi nauku, naizgled beži od kritičkog diskursa i diskutovanja koje bi moglo u pitanje dovesti njegove tvrdnje. Mislim da bi ulaganje više napora u moderisanje bilo bolje rešenje ali nije da sam ja knjigovođa Popular Sciencea... Da jesam, verovatno bih sugerisao da se pokuša sa uvođenjem kolektivnog moderiranja po uzoru na Slashdot, ali eto...

Why We're Shutting Off Our Comments

Starting today, PopularScience.com will no longer accept comments on new articles. Here's why.

Comments can be bad for science. That's why, here at PopularScience.com, we're shutting them off.
It wasn't a decision we made lightly. As the news arm of a 141-year-old science and technology magazine, we are as committed to fostering lively, intellectual debate as we are to spreading the word of science far and wide. The problem is when trolls and spambots overwhelm the former, diminishing our ability to do the latter.
That is not to suggest that we are the only website in the world that attracts vexing commenters. Far from it. Nor is it to suggest that all, or even close to all, of our commenters are shrill, boorish specimens of the lower internet phyla. We have many delightful, thought-provoking commenters.
But even a fractious minority wields enough power to skew a reader's perception of a story, recent research suggests. In one study led by University of Wisconsin-Madison professor Dominique Brossard, 1,183 Americans read a fake blog post on nanotechnology and revealed in survey questions how they felt about the subject (are they wary of the benefits or supportive?). Then, through a randomly assigned condition, they read either epithet- and insult-laden comments ("If you don't see the benefits of using nanotechnology in these kinds of products, you're an idiot" ) or civil comments. The results, as Brossard and coauthor Dietram A. Scheufele wrote in a New York Times op-ed: Uncivil comments not only polarized readers, but they often changed a participant's interpretation of the news story itself.  In the civil group, those who initially did or did not support the technology — whom we identified with preliminary survey questions — continued to feel the same way after reading the comments. Those exposed to rude comments, however, ended up with a much more polarized understanding of the risks connected with the technology.  Simply including an ad hominem attack in a reader comment was enough to make study participants think the downside of the reported technology was greater than they'd previously thought. Another, similarly designed study found that just firmly worded (but not uncivil) disagreements between commenters impacted readers' perception of science.
If you carry out those results to their logical end--commenters shape public opinion; public opinion shapes public policy; public policy shapes how and whether and what research gets funded--you start to see why we feel compelled to hit the "off" switch.


A politically motivated, decades-long war on expertise has eroded the popular consensus on a wide variety of scientifically validated topics. Everything, from evolution to the origins of climate change, is mistakenly up for grabs again. Scientific certainty is just another thing for two people to "debate" on television. And because comments sections tend to be a grotesque reflection of the media culture surrounding them, the cynical work of undermining bedrock scientific doctrine is now being done beneath our own stories, within a website devoted to championing science.
There are plenty of other ways to talk back to us, and to each other: through Twitter, Facebook, Google+, Pinterest, livechats, email, and more. We also plan to open the comments section on select articles that lend themselves to vigorous and intelligent discussion. We hope you'll chime in with your brightest thoughts. Don't do it for us. Do it for science.
Suzanne LaBarre is the online content director of Popular Science. Email suzanne.labarre at popsci dot com.

[zakk]

pa onda i mi da spalimo znak sagite odma...

[PTY]

 

pa onda i mi da spalimo znak sagite odma...

 
A što?  Nije valjda da ovde nešto ne valja?  Otkud sad to odjedared? *treptrep* Da ti nije malko to hard to larboard fenomen? Sve mi se javlja da se ovde nekad nešto drugo mislilo… a i radilo… kako ono beše… “valjaju paprike i na džak kad se kupuju”, a?   
Al’ dobro, bolje da nije nikom ni važno, a ne bi ni valjalo da danas nekog grize savest, nedajbože. Lakše spalit ceo forum, sad kad nije za one koji vole u kafanu na stolovi da tvituju.     
 

[zakk]

U svakoj šali ima zrnce zbilje, ali ovo je ipak šala, dakle, opusti se... 

[PTY]

 Aman… pa čega to neopuštenog ima u mom pokušaju da ti skrenem pažnju kako se šegačiš  sa situacijom na koju skoro da posredni kopirajt polažeš? To je kao kad Mehu uhvati da dramakviniše što se ljudi ne ponašaju u skladu sa petom im decenijom trajanja… missim, kamaun pipl! 
 
 
A što se same afere tiče, jeste da je malko polarizovala ljude na fb, ali pretegli su izgleda argumenti u podršku. ‘Isključivanje ludila’ je ne samo validna nego i obavezna odbrana diskursa a moderacija (ma kako strikntna i ažurna) po svojoj prirodi nije adekvatna alatka u tom konkretnom naporu: moderator ne samo da ne može da isključi ludilo (u većini slučajeva neće ni da ga prepozna na vreme, ionako), nego naprosto mora da razmotri sve priloge u svom mehanizmu procenjivanja, otud – moderator svim prilozima jednako pristupa, jednako ih procenjuje i jednako razmatra, to bar do odluke o njihovom ukljanjanju. To ga čini neselektivnim, naravno, pa otud i beskorisnim. A da i ne govorim o delikatnim situacijama u kojima se mora razmotriti i sasvim trezven i lucidan post kojim neko zaludan odgovara ludaku/provokatoru… to je najgora od svih dilema, da li to brisati ili ne. Zato, ovo što PS radi je, po meni, naidealnija opcija.
 

[Mica Milovanovic]

Ja razumem tvoj gnev, jer bih i sam često poželeo da pobrišem dve trećine postova sa ZS-a, ali moraš da priznaš da nije isto moderisanje ZS-a i PS-a. Ovo je, ipak forum. Ne važe isti principi...

[PTY]

To o principima je već stvar tačke gledišta, dozvolićeš. Govorila sam o generalnom očuvanju diskursa, to bilo kog tematskog, pa zašto ne i ovog, na kraju krajeva? Koju to tačno svrhu ima bilo kakvo podsticanje učesnika koji očigledno ne vladaju ni zdravim razumom, a kamoli tematikom razgovora? Ja mogu da dozvolim mogućnost da se to radi u svrhu zabave, to od neke prizemnije vrste - i ja sebi zabave nalazim tamo gde neko pametniji ne bi - ali ako je već tako, onda bar ne budimo licemeri da se kasnije nad upravo takvom situacijom kobajagi zgražamo. Popravite to što možete, a što ne možete, pa to onda barem ignorišite, nije ovde niko slep pa da ne vidi nivo fekalije čiju su produkciju baš vajni upirači prstom najizdašnije producirali, to između svih nas grešnih ostalih. Kakav je to fazon da se ovde svraća samo sa podjebljivo-duhovitim onelinerima?


A ako o direktnom moderisanju već govorimo, onda bi isto tako fer bilo priznati da je upravo ovo forum najgadnije moderisan od sviju za koje znam: ovo je forum iza čije silne i surove moderacije ne leži nikakav prepoznatljiv mehanizam, niti bilo kakva meni prepoznatljiva logika, to van njihove prosto trenutačne (znači, intuitivne, pa stoga i slepački kratkoročne) samovolje.

[Mica Milovanovic]

Mož' biti da si u pravu. Ipak, učestalost moderacije je toliko mala da se to relativno slabo oseća...
Reči: "silne" i "surove" su možda preterane...
Ali, ostavimo to ličnom utisku. Ne bih da polemišem po ovom pitanju i doprinosim zabavi dokonih...

[PTY]

Mož' biti da si u pravu. Ipak, učestalost moderacije je toliko mala da se to relativno slabo oseća...

E da, to mi kaže čovek kojem nikada niti jedan post sa foruma nije bio uklonjen - to ako ne računamo sve one postove koji su uklonjeni zajedno sa celim topicima, jelte, ali na te rane nećemo okeansku so da sada sipamo - pa se stoga sad tebi i otvara to pitanje strogosti moderacije. A pošto si ti - ti, a ja sam samo ja, ostavićemo mogućnost da si ti u svim postovima bio u pravu, a ja sam u mnogima bila u krivu. Bolje to nego da brojimo bilo šta drugo.


Sa ostalim navodima u tvom postu se apsolutno slažem i računam da baš zato nama dvoma i ne treba fenomen moderacije, jer eto, mi oboje znamo to što znamo, mada očigledno nismo jednako u tom znanju bogatiji.

[Meho Krljic]

Dalje dileme vezane za komentarisanje naučnih pisanija po Internetu:

Closing Commenting

  Popular Science, one of the longest running and, well, popular, magazines that deals with science has a website. Last Tuesday, on-line editor Suzanne LaBarre announced that Popular Science would no longer have comment sections on most of its pages.  The reason sited was that “Comments can be bad for science.”  She noted:
 

A politically motivated, decades-long war on expertise has eroded the popular consensus on a wide variety of scientifically validated topics. Everything, from evolution to the origins of climate change, is mistakenly up for grabs again. Scientific certainty is just another thing for two people to “debate” on television. And because comments sections tend to be a grotesque reflection of the media culture surrounding them, the cynical work of undermining bedrock scientific doctrine is now being done beneath our own stories, within a website devoted to championing science.

She is absolutely correct.  It seems, in fact, that attacking science in the comment sections of blogs and web sites is a cottage industry practiced vigorously by a very active minority of readers (we hope). And it may well be effective.  Last January, Chris Mooney wrote:
 

Everybody who’s written or blogged about climate change on a prominent website (or, even worse, spoken about it on YouTube) knows the drill. Shortly after you post, the menagerie of trolls arrives. They’re predominantly climate deniers, and they start in immediately arguing over the content and attacking the science—sometimes by slinging insults and even occasional obscenities.

Chris talks about a study done by researchers at George Mason University Center for Climate Change Communication (and others) that showed that these negative comments can be effective in ruining readers’ perception of the validity of science written about on line.   
 

The study did not examine online climate change trolls directly—but there is good reason to think that the effects of their obnoxious behavior will, if anything, be worse. … When it comes to climate change… “the controversy that you see in comments falls on more fertile ground, and resonates more with an established set of values that the reader may bring to the table,” explains study coauthor Dietram Scheufele, … If commenters have stronger emotions and more of a stake, it stands to reason that the polarizing effect of their insults may be even stronger—although, to be sure, this needs to be studied.
… This is not your father’s media environment any longer. In the golden oldie days of media, newspaper articles were consumed in the context of…other newspaper articles. But now, adds Scheufele, it’s like “reading the news article in the middle of the town square, with people screaming in my ear what I should believe about it.”

(Click through to CM’s post to get the link to that study.)
Chris told me “It is indeed possible to moderate comments to make them productive, but it is a huge amount of work. So I’m not that surprised that Popular Science opted not to do it.”
Will Oremus writing at Slate disagrees. He notes:
 

Sure, some very important scientific questions are pretty much settled … But LaBarre’s metaphors conjure an image of science as an ancient and immovable stone fortress, from which the anointed few (Popular Science staff writers, say) may cast pearls in the direction of the masses below, but which might crumble to dust if the teeming throngs aren’t kept at bay. This conception is antithetical to the spirit of free inquiry that has always driven scientific discovery.

And here, in Will Oremus’s comment (and elsewhere) I see a flaw. The assumption implicit (or not so implicit) in Oremus’s commentary in Slate is that comments contribute to the science directly, by becoming part of the “spirit of free inquiry.” And I’m sure this is a feeling shared by many of the comment trolls of whom we are speaking.
The problem is, this is largely a made up fantasy.  There are two distinct things going on here. One is science, which involves free inquiry and lots of communication among scientists, and the other is public understanding of science, which is very important because it is a key part of the process of translating science knowledge into science policy, especially in a society that thinks of itself as a democracy. 
The comment trolls are not ruining science.  They are ruining public perception of science.  The commentary on web sites and blog posts is not part of the science conversation that produces scientific results (or, if so, rarely). 
I wrote an opinion piece for The Scientist expressing this view, and it was put up this morning. Please go and have a look:  Opinion: Part of the Conversation? On whether online comments help or hurt science.
If you have a comment on any of this, please feel free to add it to the page at The Scientist, or below, or both.  I don’t have any control over the comment section at The Scientist, but here on this blog, have at it, even if you are a troll, as long as you are not a spam bot (and I can tell the difference, usually). 
 

Evo i celog drugog Gregovog članka:



Opinion: Part of the Conversation?

Where in science do we find free inquiry, vigorous debate, open and frank discussion of research, and productive—if sometimes acrimonious—conversations about methods, data, findings, interpretation, and implications? Most of these conversations happen in the comment sections of blogs and other websites, right?
 
 Actually, no.
 
 These conversations happen elsewhere. For example, many research labs hold weekly meetings that all members attend. There are e-mail lists used by groups of scientists working at diverse institutions to hash out their methods, share data, and challenge one another’s interpretations. Then there are more formal settings, such as conferences, where some give talks while others prowl the hallways, cafeterias, local pubs, and hotel lounges getting in touch with colleagues, exchanging ideas, making plans, and renewing their contacts with fellow scientists. And there are many other fora that are much better suited to discussing science than the comment sections that accompany most blog posts and news reports. Arguably, peer review is the ultimate conversation in science.
 While notes left on blogs and websites are not part of this formalized process, some people do have meaningful discussions of scientific issues in the comment sections of these sites. These conversations can be quite interesting and informative, but they have virtually nothing to do with how science is done. Some scientists engage in online commenting now and then, but when they do, it is almost always to lend their support to science when a reported finding is challenged by anti-science trolls.
 
 I’ve written many blog posts that report on scientific findings. In doing so, I often send a link to the researchers involved in the work, inviting them to participate in the comments. They almost never do, though when they have, I’ve never seen the resulting conversation replicate a discussion that might occur within the science community.
 
 Recently, PopularScience.com—the website of the eponymous magazine—decided to shut down commenting on most of its pages. Popular Science said its comment sections had become polluted with trolls and spambots. While the publication could have spent additional resources policing, cleaning up, and even redirecting the conversations on those pages, its staff instead elected to eliminate this public forum.
  Some have complained, suggesting that the commentary on these pages—or on blogs and websites more generally—is somehow part of the scientific process, and that closing out comments will have a negative effect on inquiry. But removing the comment boxes from these web pages will have little to no effect on what scientists are doing. To my mind, Popular Science is not doing science any harm.     Even so, while science may not be at risk, public understanding of science certainly is. Non-scientists with a thirst for scientific knowledge read websites like Popular Science, The Scientist, and ScienceBlogs, and indeed, members of the general public can learn and engage in the comment sections of these sites. But if the comments have become infested with trolls, then that’s all been ruined and there is not much hope of advancing the general understanding of science by preserving such a forum. Troll-infested fora negatively impact the public side of scientific discourse. We should not encourage—and certainly should not protect—virtual soapboxes for anti-science blather.     As a blogger, I understand how difficult managing online comments can be. A couple of years ago, I got strict with commenting on my blog in an effort to shun the science denialists. I let the occasional questionable comment through, but made it clear my blog would not be a platform for people engaged in what I regard as a nefarious activity: diverting progress by messing with our single most important resource—knowledge. When I implemented that rule, I did not see a drop in my readership. Rather, I received numerous appreciative e-mails, and significantly reduced my use of antacids. I suspect the Popular Science editors are experiencing a similar sense of relief now.     Online discourse is a good thing, and it has become part of our Internet Culture, but there is no rule that says that every page on this World Wide Web needs a comment box at the bottom of it.     Greg Laden is a biological anthropologist and science communicator who has done research in the evolution of human diet and ecology. His blog is hosted by ScienceBlogs.com.

[Meho Krljic]

Daily Tech, pak ima suprotno mišljenje i mada se u ovom tekstu insistira da naučnik ne mora ni u šta da veruje jer on uvek samo posmatra realnost, što nije baš sasvim istina u najširem smislu, članak je ipak zdravo pročitati.

 
Editorial: PopSci Kills Comments, Blames Global Warming, Evolution

Comments interfere with preaching a "scientific doctrine" (presumably a religion of sorts), according to PopSci

 First they came for the BoingBoing comments, then they came for the Popular Science comments, then they came for... wait, that pretty much sums up the current state of affairs.  After BoingBoing opted to scrap its in-article comments for a forum in a few months back in June, PopSci just announced its decision to follow in suit with an article entitled "Why We're Shutting Off Our Comments".  This remarkable act of reader censorship is backed by a number of questionable assertions -- most notably the notion that reader comments undermine the preaching of a "scientific doctrine" and that "comments are bad for science." 
 
 (The New York Times has also scaled back comments, disabling them entirely in some pieces.)
 
 I. Censorship, the Tired Retreat of the Thin Skinned
 
 These decisions may smack some as subjective or even malicious.  After all comments are arguably the digital age response to print's "letter to the editor" -- and they often contain criticisms of the article ranging from grammatical erorrs to factual oversights.  Some may view the decision to ban comments as a form of censorship, a means for writers to escape any sort of visible accountability among their audience.
 
 And while moderation of extreme trolling is at times necessary, comments provide an essential outlet for user opinion.




But PopSci argues that the evil of comments outweighs their merits.  It says that it has been ovewhelmed by "trolls and spambots" and its editor Suzanne LaBarre writes: 
 Comments can be bad for science. That's why, here at PopularScience.com, we're shutting them off.
 And since the blog is about science they at least attempt to back their conclusion with a scientific study -- a journal paper published by Dominique Brossard a Life Sciences Communication professor at the Univ. of Wisconsin-Madison.  Published in the February 2013 edition of the peer-reviewed Journal of Computer-Mediated Communications, Professor Brossard's study involved perceptions of a fictious nanotechnology article, which people were asked to react to. 
 
 People reacted neutrally when comments were disabled, but even when comments were generally positive their reactions did not noticeably improved.  However, when the reader feedback took on a "less civil" tone with people questioning the merits of nanotechnology, user perception of the publication itself (not just the topic discussed) took a decidedly negative turn.
 
 II. PopSci Complains That Comments Interfere With Its Ability to "Indoctrinate" Readers
 
 PopSci piece also in a roundabout way suggests it had to revoke its users' commenting rights due to their criticisms of studies on global warming.  It writes: 
 A politically motivated, decades-long war on expertise has eroded the popular consensus on a wide variety of scientifically validated topics. Everything, from evolution to the origins of climate change, is mistakenly up for grabs again. Scientific certainty is just another thing for two people to "debate" on television.
 
 And because comments sections tend to be a grotesque reflection of the media culture surrounding them, the cynical work of undermining bedrock scientific doctrine is now being done beneath our own stories, within a website devoted to championing science.
 She cites an editorial in The New York Times voicing similar complaints.



But it is Ms. LaBarre's use of the phrase "scientific doctrine" which should is most interesting, and perhaps telling.  The root word of indoctrination -- brainwashing with a rigid set set of beliefs -- is "doctrine".  Indeed the Wikipedia entry for "doctrine" states:  Doctrine (from Latin: doctrina) is a codification of beliefs or a body of teachings or instructions, taught principles or positions, as the body of teachings in a branch of knowledge or belief system. The Greek analogue is the etymology of catechism.[1]
 Often doctrine specifically connotes a corpus of religious dogma as it is promulgated by a church, but not necessarily: doctrine is also used to refer to a principle of law...
 And Google Inc.'s (GOOG) built in dictionary describes doctrine as: 
 a belief or set of beliefs held and taught by a church, political party, or other group.
 Science has little to do with beliefs.  Science is the process of observation, of collecting hard, repeatable evidence.  Belief is unnecessary to a scientist who does their job right, as they are simply studying reality.
 
 The phrase seems decidedly odd as coming from a science publication: after all isn't open, informed debate the root of all science?  Since when has indoctrination -- peddling of a set of rigid, unquestioning beliefs, most often associated with religion -- become part of the scientific process?
 
 Perhaps lack of critical feedback, user bickering, and spam may indeed improve the perception of PopSci.  But it's hard to imagine Socrates or Plato, were they alive today, shutting the door to public commentary.  After all, as journalists we all have to remember we aren't actually doing science -- at least not at our news jobs -- we're simply trying to represent it in a clear and concise form that the public can understand and enjoy.



While PopSci writes "we have many delightful, thought-provoking commenters," it's hard to escape the impression that its editors think themselves greater science minds than their readership.  Perhaps that's why they're so eager to "indoctrinate" readers (quite literally what Ms. LaBarre says is the site's goals) with their superior wisdom (i.e. interpretations) of science.
 
 But here at DailyTech we take a different view.  We reject censorship and believe in free expression.
 
 We welcome all opinions from the novice to the professional.  We welcome respectful criticism of our authors, our articles, and the material therein, in a public place for all to see.  We don't believe doctrines and indoctrination have a place in open scientific discussion.
 
 At the same time we acknowledge that comments -- criticism, trolling, and more -- are a painful burden at times.  But it is a burden we choose to bear because we must.  Perhaps it will hurt our readers' impressions of our site.  But journalism and science are founded upon open discourse and a receptiveness to feedback.  Once you lose that, you risk rapid loss of your accountability and credibility.

[PTY]

 Heh… ovaj Daily Tech editorijal post meni zapravo totalno ilustruje problem: kanda je malko isuviše vitrioličan po svom tonu, pa se zbog toga još lakše gubi ona ionako tanka linija između argumenta i manipulacije. A i pančlajn je tu pristigao baš kao poslednja kap da ga sasvim sjuri u manipulaciju: “But journalism and science are founded upon open discourse and a receptiveness to feedback.  Once you lose that, you risk rapid loss of your accountability and credibility.” Mda.  Ajde što su receptivnost na fidbek u novinarstvu i nauci baš babe i žabe, sve i ako se makar u istoj diskursnoj vodi brčkaju, ali bogami je i svakom normalnom kristalno jasno da je otvoreni diskurs jedno, a nekompetentno komentarisanje nešto sasvim drugo. Novinarstvo skoro da počiva na potrošačkom fidbeku a nauka bogami baš i ne, teško da se naučne teze potvrđuju ili osporavaju korisničkim komentarima, biće da tu ipak ima neka druga procedura. A i insinuacija o ‘PS malicioznom cenzoršipu’ je baš zdravo maliciozna, pošto je čak i laiku očigledno da ova vrst kontrolisanja internetske konverzacije neće nauditi kredibilitetu same nauke, nego samo izvesnog vida popularizacije nauke ( a i to je otvoreno pitanje, ja čak ne mislim ni da će uopšte nauditi, naprotiv), a to uopšte nije isto.
Ne znam ko to iskreno očekuje da će se išta merljivo korisno izvući iz laičkih komentara na sajtu, a oni čiji bi komentari mogli biti korisni, pa, ti teško da će ih baš tako prosipati na open discourse internet sajt.

[Meho Krljic]

pošto je čak i laiku očigledno da ova vrst kontrolisanja internetske konverzacije neće nauditi kredibilitetu same nauke, nego samo izvesnog vida popularizacije nauke

Pa, to. To je srž rasprave, čini mi se.

S druge strane, ja sam gore već u originalnom postu rekao da mislim da je rešenje u boljoj moderaciji (eventualno automoderaciji od strane samog čitalaštva) jer ona omogućuje da rasprava bude struktuirana dobro, pa makar i najpopularniji komentari bili drsko nenaučni. To onda barem pokazuje šta svet o čemu misli i koje su teze koje publicistika onda treba da uzme u obzir u daljem radu.

[PTY]

 Generalno govoreći, i u nekom idealnom svetu, bio bi potpuno u pravu. Ali u izostanku toga, već je urednica naglasila u čemu je problem: štetnost takve konkretno onlajn situacije po pravilu nadmaši njen eventualni benefit, tako da je upravo taj finalni skor bio razlog donošenju njena konkretne odluke. E sad, ako sa jedne strane imaš merljiv i konkretan učinak a sa druge strane imaš generalnu odbranu principa popularizacije i njenog specifičnog diskursa… šta ja znam, meni je njena odluka ipak logičnija, valjda zato jer je smatram korisnijom.

[Meho Krljic]

Da, mislim da je kod mene u pitanju to da branim princip kao svetinju i da podrazumevam da komentari kakvi god bili ne mogu da "oštete" originalni članak jer sumnjam da ih više od 10% čitalaca uopšte pogleda. Ali to je samo mišljenje, naravno.

[PTY]

 Kad odrasteš, shvatićeš da je đavo u detaljima konteksta.   
Ali sad na ozbiljniju notu - i ja sebe smatram poslednjom osobom koja bi posegla za cenzurom, otud i pravim vrednosnu razliku između moderacije (koju zastupaš ti) i embarga (kojem se sve više priklanjam ja):  a ako se bez moderacije baš nikako ne može, onda mi bolja tišina. Čujem ponekad kako ljudi mrtvi-ozbiljni izjavljuju bedastoće primerenije mračnom četrnaestom veku i eto, bolja mi tišina. (Znaš za onu scenu iz WWZ kada na biciklima tiho idu da napune avion gorivom a onda mu nesretniku zazvrnda mobilni? To je to, to je naprosto zdravorazumski ustupak, da se isključi mobilni, jer se mora. )
Ali okej je meni ako ti hoćeš da braniš baš taj princip kao svetinju, neko valjda i to mora da radi, a ja odoh sad da budem malo i korisna.   

[Meho Krljic]

Razumem to da je čoveku bolja tišina nego da sluša lupetanja, naravno. Samo sam valjda skloniji tome da je bitno i da se čuju lupetanja jer onda znaš šta ljudi misle i kako da nekom drugom prilikom formulišeš svoje teze itd. Pogotovo što pričamo baš o publicistici koja treba da poplariše nauku. Ali naravno da to zahteva napor za koji ne može čovek uvek da bude raspoložen...

[Meho Krljic]

I sa druge strane, ne treba da nas iznenadi što i američki naučnici rade isto što i naši: napišu "naučni" rad prepun očiglednih besmislica sa očigledno izmišljenim referencama a onda gledaju da li će urednici "naučnih" publikacija da ih objave. U našem slučaju (kako je to na ovom topiku dokumentovao Gul) radilo se samo o slanju jednom rumunjskom magazinu. U američkom slučaju, čovek je poslao rad na preko trista adresa i na više od pola je objavljen:
 Who's Afraid of Peer Review?
 

A spoof paper concocted by Science reveals little or no scrutiny at many open-access journals.
 
On 4 July, good news arrived in the inbox of Ocorrafoo Cobange, a biologist at the Wassee Institute of Medicine in Asmara. It was the official letter of acceptance for a paper he had submitted 2 months earlier to the Journal of Natural Pharmaceuticals, describing the anticancer properties of a chemical that Cobange had extracted from a lichen.
 
In fact, it should have been promptly rejected. Any reviewer with more than a high-school knowledge of chemistry and the ability to understand a basic data plot should have spotted the paper's short-comings immediately. Its experiments are so hopelessly flawed that the results are meaningless.
 
I know because I wrote the paper. Ocorrafoo Cobange does not exist, nor does the Wassee Institute of Medicine. Over the past 10 months, I have submitted 304 versions of the wonder drug paper to open-access journals. More than half of the journals accepted the paper, failing to notice its fatal flaws. Beyond that headline result, the data from this sting operation reveal the contours of an emerging Wild West in academic publishing.
 
 
From humble and idealistic beginnings a decade ago, open-access scientific journals have mushroomed into a global industry, driven by author publication fees rather than traditional subscriptions. Most of the players are murky. The identity and location of the journals' editors, as well as the financial workings of their publishers, are often purposefully obscured. But Science's investigation casts a powerful light. Internet Protocol (IP) address traces within the raw headers of e-mails sent by journal editors betray their locations. Invoices for publication fees reveal a network of bank accounts based mostly in the developing world. And the acceptances and rejections of the paper provide the first global snapshot of peer review across the open-access scientific enterprise.
 
One might have expected credible peer review at the Journal of Natural Pharmaceuticals. It describes itself as "a peer reviewed journal aiming to communicate high quality research articles, short communications, and reviews in the field of natural products with desired pharmacological activities." The editors and advisory board members are pharmaceutical science professors at universities around the world.
 
The journal is one of more than 270 owned by Medknow, a company based in Mumbai, India, and one of the largest open-access publishers. According to Medknow's website, more than 2 million of its articles are downloaded by researchers every month. Medknow was bought for an undisclosed sum in 2011 by Wolters Kluwer, a multinational firm headquartered in the Netherlands and one of the world's leading purveyors of medical information with annual revenues of nearly $5 billion.
 
But the editorial team of the Journal of Natural Pharmaceuticals, headed by Editor-in-Chief Ilkay Orhan, a professor of pharmacy at Eastern Mediterranean University in Gazimagosa, Cyprus, asked the fictional Cobange for only superficial changes to the paper—different reference formats and a longer abstract—before accepting it 51 days later. The paper's scientific content was never mentioned. In an e-mail to Science, managing editor Mueen Ahmed, a professor of pharmacy at King Faisal University in Al-Hasa, Saudi Arabia, states that he will permanently shut down the journal by the end of the year. "I am really sorry for this," he says. Orhan says that for the past 2 years, he had left the journal's operation entirely to staff led by Ahmed. (Ahmed confirms this.) "I should've been more careful," Orhan says.
 
Acceptance was the norm, not the exception. The paper was accepted by journals hosted by industry titans Sage and Elsevier. The paper was accepted by journals published by prestigious academic institutions such as Kobe University in Japan. It was accepted by scholarly society journals. It was even accepted by journals for which the paper's topic was utterly inappropriate, such as the Journal of Experimental & Clinical Assisted Reproduction.
 
The rejections tell a story of their own. Some open-access journals that have been criticized for poor quality control provided the most rigorous peer review of all. For example, the flagship journal of the Public Library of Science, PLOS ONE, was the only journal that called attention to the paper's potential ethical problems, such as its lack of documentation about the treatment of animals used to generate cells for the experiment. The journal meticulously checked with the fictional authors that this and other prerequisites of a proper scientific study were met before sending it out for review. PLOS ONE rejected the paper 2 weeks later on the basis of its scientific quality.
  Down the rabbit hole The story begins in July 2012, when the Science editorial staff forwarded to me an e-mail thread from David Roos, a biologist at the University of Pennsylvania. The thread detailed the publication woes of Aline Noutcha, a biologist at the University of Port Harcourt in Nigeria. She had taken part in a research workshop run by Roos in Mali in January last year and had been trying to publish her study of Culex quinquefasciatus, a mosquito that carries West Nile virus and other pathogens.
Noutcha had submitted the paper to an open-access journal called Public Health Research. She says that she believed that publication would be free. A colleague at her university had just published a paper for free in another journal from the same publisher: Scientific & Academic Publishing Co. (SAP), whose website does not mention fees. After Noutcha's paper was accepted, she says, she was asked to pay a $150 publication fee: a 50% discount because she is based in Nigeria. Like many developing world scientists, Noutcha does not have a credit card, and international bank transfers are complicated and costly. She eventually convinced a friend in the United States to pay a fee further reduced to $90 on her behalf, and the paper was published. 
 Roos complained that this was part of a trend of deceptive open-access journals "parasitizing the scientific research community." Intrigued, I looked into Scientific & Academic Publishing. According to its website, "SAP serves the world's research and scholarly communities, and aims to be one of the largest publishers for professional and scholarly societies." Its list includes nearly 200 journals, and I randomly chose one for a closer look. The American Journal of Polymer Science describes itself as "a continuous forum for the dissemination of thoroughly peer-reviewed, fundamental, international research into the preparation and properties of macromolecules." Plugging the text into an Internet search engine, I quickly found that portions had been cut and pasted from the website of the Journal of Polymer Science, a respected journal published by Wiley since 1946.
I began to wonder if there really is anything American about the American Journal of Polymer Science. SAP's website claims that the journal is published out of Los Angeles. The street address appears to be no more than the intersection of two highways, and no phone numbers are listed.
I contacted some of the people listed as the journal's editors and reviewers. The few who replied said they have had little contact with SAP. Maria Raimo, a chemist at the Institute of Chemistry and Technology of Polymers in Naples, Italy, had received an e-mail invitation to be a reviewer 4 months earlier. To that point, she had received a single paper—one so poor that "I thought it was a joke," she says.
Despite her remonstrations to the then–editor-in-chief, a person of unknown affiliation called David Thomas, the journal published the paper. Raimo says she asked to be removed from the masthead. More than a year later, the paper is still online and the journal still lists Raimo as a reviewer.
After months of e-mailing the editors of SAP, I finally received a response. Someone named Charles Duke reiterated—in broken English—that SAP is an American publisher based in California. His e-mail arrived at 3 a.m., Eastern time.
To replicate Noutcha's experience, I decided to submit a paper of my own to an SAP journal. And to get the lay of this shadowy publishing landscape, I would have to replicate the experiment across the entire open-access world.
   The targets The Who's Who of credible open-access journals is the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ). Created 10 years ago by Lars Bjørnshauge, a library scientist at Lund University in Sweden, the DOAJ has grown rapidly, with about 1000 titles added last year alone. Without revealing my plan, I asked DOAJ staff members how journals make it onto their list. "The title must first be suggested to us through a form on our website," explained DOAJ's Linnéa Stenson. "If a journal hasn't published enough, we contact the editor or publisher and ask them to come back to us when the title has published more content." Before listing a journal, they review it based on information provided by the publisher. On 2 October 2012, when I launched my sting, the DOAJ contained 8250 journals and abundant metadata for each one, such as the name and URL of the publisher, the year it was founded, and the topics it covers.
There is another list—one that journals fear. It is curated by Jeffrey Beall, a library scientist at the University of Colorado, Denver. His list is a single page on the Internet that names and shames what he calls "predatory" publishers. The term is a catchall for what Beall views as unprofessional practices, from undisclosed charges and poorly defined editorial hierarchy to poor English—criteria that critics say stack the deck against non-U.S. publishers.
Like Batman, Beall is mistrusted by many of those he aims to protect. "What he's doing is extremely valuable," says Paul Ginsparg, a physicist at Cornell University who founded arXiv, the preprint server that has become a key publishing platform for many areas of physics. "But he's a little bit too trigger-happy."
I asked Beall how he got into academic crime-fighting. The problem "just became too bad to ignore," he replied. The population "exploded" last year, he said. Beall counted 59 predatory open-access publishers in March 2012. That figure had doubled 3 months later, and the rate has continued to far outstrip DOAJ's growth.
To generate a comprehensive list of journals for my investigation, I filtered the DOAJ, eliminating those not published in English and those without standard open-access fees. I was left with 2054 journals associated with 438 publishers. Beall's list, which I scraped from his website on 4 October 2012, named 181 publishers. The overlap was 35 publishers, meaning that one in five of Beall's "predatory" publishers had managed to get at least one of their journals into the DOAJ.
I further whittled the list by striking off publishers lacking a general interest scientific journal or at least one biological, chemical, or medical title. The final list of targets came to 304 open-access publishers: 167 from the DOAJ, 121 from Beall's list, and 16 that were listed by both. (Links to all the publishers, papers, and correspondence are available online at http://scim.ag/OA-Sting.)
   The bait The goal was to create a credible but mundane scientific paper, one with such grave errors that a competent peer reviewer should easily identify it as flawed and unpublishable. Submitting identical papers to hundreds of journals would be asking for trouble. But the papers had to be similar enough that the outcomes between journals could be comparable. So I created a scientific version of Mad Libs.
The paper took this form: Molecule X from lichen species Y inhibits the growth of cancer cell Z. To substitute for those variables, I created a database of molecules, lichens, and cancer cell lines and wrote a computer program to generate hundreds of unique papers. Other than those differences, the scientific content of each paper is identical.
The fictitious authors are affiliated with fictitious African institutions. I generated the authors, such as Ocorrafoo M. L. Cobange, by randomly permuting African first and last names harvested from online databases, and then randomly adding middle initials. For the affiliations, such as the Wassee Institute of Medicine, I randomly combined Swahili words and African names with generic institutional words and African capital cities. My hope was that using developing world authors and institutions would arouse less suspicion if a curious editor were to find nothing about them on the Internet.
The papers describe a simple test of whether cancer cells grow more slowly in a test tube when treated with increasing concentrations of a molecule. In a second experiment, the cells were also treated with increasing doses of radiation to simulate cancer radiotherapy. The data are the same across papers, and so are the conclusions: The molecule is a powerful inhibitor of cancer cell growth, and it increases the sensitivity of cancer cells to radiotherapy.
There are numerous red flags in the papers, with the most obvious in the first data plot. The graph's caption claims that it shows a "dose-dependent" effect on cell growth—the paper's linchpin result—but the data clearly show the opposite. The molecule is tested across a staggering five orders of magnitude of concentrations, all the way down to picomolar levels. And yet, the effect on the cells is modest and identical at every concentration.
One glance at the paper's Materials & Methods section reveals the obvious explanation for this outlandish result. The molecule was dissolved in a buffer containing an unusually large amount of ethanol. The control group of cells should have been treated with the same buffer, but they were not. Thus, the molecule's observed "effect" on cell growth is nothing more than the well-known cytotoxic effect of alcohol.
The second experiment is more outrageous. The control cells were not exposed to any radiation at all. So the observed "interactive effect" is nothing more than the standard inhibition of cell growth by radiation. Indeed, it would be impossible to conclude anything from this experiment.
To ensure that the papers were both fatally flawed and credible submissions, two independent groups of molecular biologists at Harvard University volunteered to be virtual peer reviewers. Their first reaction, based on their experience reviewing papers from developing world authors, was that my native English might raise suspicions. So I translated the paper into French with Google Translate, and then translated the result back into English. After correcting the worst mistranslations, the result was a grammatically correct paper with the idiom of a non-native speaker.
The researchers also helped me fine-tune the scientific flaws so that they were both obvious and "boringly bad." For example, in early drafts, the data were so unexplainably weird that they became "interesting"—perhaps suggesting the glimmer of a scientific breakthrough. I dialed those down to the sort of common blunders that a peer reviewer should easily interdict.
The paper's final statement should chill any reviewer who reads that far. "In the next step, we will prove that molecule X is effective against cancer in animal and human. We conclude that molecule X is a promising new drug for the combined-modality treatment of cancer." If the scientific errors aren't motivation enough to reject the paper, its apparent advocacy of bypassing clinical trials certainly should be.
   The sting Between January and August of 2013, I submitted papers at a rate of about 10 per week: one paper to a single journal for each publisher. I chose journals that most closely matched the paper's subject. First choice would be a journal of pharmaceutical science or cancer biology, followed by general medicine, biology, or chemistry. In the beginning, I used several Yahoo e-mail addresses for the submission process, before eventually creating my own e-mail service domain, afra-mail.com, to automate submission.
A handful of publishers required a fee be paid up front for paper submission. I struck them off the target list. The rest use the standard open-access "gold" model: The author pays a fee if the paper is published.
If a journal rejected the paper, that was the end of the line. If a journal sent review comments that asked for changes to layout or format, I complied and resubmitted. If a review addressed any of the paper's serious scientific problems, I sent the editor a "revised" version that was superficially improved—a few more photos of lichens, fancier formatting, extra details on methodology—but without changing any of the fatal scientific flaws.
After a journal accepted a paper, I sent a standard e-mail to the editor: "Unfortunately, while revising our manuscript we discovered an embarrassing mistake. We see now that there is a serious flaw in our experiment which invalidates the conclusions." I then withdrew the paper.
   The results By the time Science went to press, 157 of the journals had accepted the paper and 98 had rejected it. Of the remaining 49 journals, 29 seem to be derelict: websites abandoned by their creators. Editors from the other 20 had e-mailed the fictitious corresponding authors stating that the paper was still under review; those, too, are excluded from this analysis. Acceptance took 40 days on average, compared to 24 days to elicit a rejection.
Of the 255 papers that underwent the entire editing process to acceptance or rejection, about 60% of the final decisions occurred with no sign of peer review. For rejections, that's good news: It means that the journal's quality control was high enough that the editor examined the paper and declined it rather than send it out for review. But for acceptances, it likely means that the paper was rubber-stamped without being read by anyone.
Of the 106 journals that discernibly performed any review, 70% ultimately accepted the paper. Most reviews focused exclusively on the paper's layout, formatting, and language. This sting did not waste the time of many legitimate peer reviewers. Only 36 of the 304 submissions generated review comments recognizing any of the paper's scientific problems. And 16 of those papers were accepted by the editors despite the damning reviews.
The results show that Beall is good at spotting publishers with poor quality control: For the publishers on his list that completed the review process, 82% accepted the paper. Of course that also means that almost one in five on his list did the right thing—at least with my submission. A bigger surprise is that for DOAJ publishers that completed the review process, 45% accepted the bogus paper. "I find it hard to believe," says Bjørnshauge, the DOAJ founder. "We have been working with the community to draft new tighter criteria for inclusion." Beall, meanwhile, notes that in the year since this sting began, "the number of predatory publishers and predatory journals has continued to escalate at a rapid pace."
A striking picture emerges from the global distribution of open-access publishers, editors, and bank accounts. Most of the publishing operations cloak their true geographic location. They create journals with names like the American Journal of Medical and Dental Sciences or the European Journal of Chemistry to imitate—and in some cases, literally clone—those of Western academic publishers. But the locations revealed by IP addresses and bank invoices are continents away: Those two journals are published from Pakistan and Turkey, respectively, and both accepted the paper. The editor-in-chief of the European Journal of Chemistry, Hakan Arslan, a professor of chemistry at Mersin University in Turkey, does not see this as a failure of peer review but rather a breakdown in trust. When a paper is submitted, he writes in an e-mail, "We believe that your article is original and [all of] your supplied information is correct." The American Journal of Medical and Dental Sciences did not respond to e-mails.
About one-third of the journals targeted in this sting are based in India—overtly or as revealed by the location of editors and bank accounts—making it the world's largest base for open-access publishing; and among the India-based journals in my sample, 64 accepted the fatally flawed papers and only 15 rejected it. 26 rejections. (Explore a global wiring diagram of open-access publishing at http://scim.ag/OA-Sting.)
But even when editors and bank accounts are in the developing world, the company that ultimately reaps the profits may be based in the United States or Europe. In some cases, academic publishing powerhouses sit at the top of the chain.
Journals published by Elsevier, Wolters Kluwer, and Sage all accepted my bogus paper. Wolters Kluwer Health, the division responsible for the Medknow journals, "is committed to rigorous adherence to the peer-review processes and policies that comply with the latest recommendations of the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors and the World Association of Medical Editors," a Wolters Kluwer representative states in an e-mail. "We have taken immediate action and closed down the Journal of Natural Pharmaceuticals."
In 2012, Sage was named the Independent Publishers Guild Academic and Professional Publisher of the Year. The Sage publication that accepted my bogus paper is the Journal of International Medical Research. Without asking for any changes to the paper's scientific content, the journal sent an acceptance letter and an invoice for $3100. "I take full responsibility for the fact that this spoof paper slipped through the editing process," writes Editor-in-Chief Malcolm Lader, a professor of pschopharmacology at King's College London and a fellow of the Royal Society of Psychiatrists, in an e-mail. He notes, however, that acceptance would not have guaranteed publication: "The publishers requested payment because the second phase, the technical editing, is detailed and expensive. … Papers can still be rejected at this stage if inconsistencies are not clarified to the satisfaction of the journal." Lader argues that this sting has a broader, detrimental effect as well. "An element of trust must necessarily exist in research including that carried out in disadvantaged countries," he writes. "Your activities here detract from that trust."
The Elsevier journal that accepted the paper, Drug Invention Today, is not actually owned by Elsevier, says Tom Reller, vice president for Elsevier global corporate relations: "We publish it for someone else." In an e-mail to Science, the person listed on the journal's website as editor-in-chief, Raghavendra Kulkarni, a professor of pharmacy at the BLDEA College of Pharmacy in Bijapur, India, stated that he has "not had access to [the] editorial process by Elsevier" since April, when the journal's owner "started working on [the] editorial process." "We apply a set of criteria to all journals before they are hosted on the Elsevier platform," Reller says. As a result of the sting, he says, "we will conduct another review."
The editor-in-chief of the Kobe Journal of Medical Sciences, Shun-ichi Nakamura, a professor of medicine at Kobe University in Japan, did not respond to e-mails. But his assistant, Reiko Kharbas, writes that "Upon receiving the letter of acceptance, Dr. Obalanefah withdrew the paper," referring to the standard final e-mail I sent to journals that accepted the paper. "Therefore, the letter of acceptance we have sent … has no effect whatsoever."
Other publishers are glad to have dodged the bullet. "It is a relief to know that our system is working," says Paul Peters, chief strategy officer of Hindawi, an open-access publisher in Cairo. Hindawi is an enormous operation: a 1000-strong editorial staff handling more than 25,000 articles per year from 559 journals. When Hindawi began expanding into open-access publishing in 2004, Peters admits, "we looked amateurish." But since then, he says, "publication ethics" has been their mantra. Peer reviewers at one Hindawi journal, Chemotherapy Research and Practice, rejected my paper after identifying its glaring faults. An editor recommended I try another Hindawi journal, ISRN Oncology; it, too, rejected my submission.
   Coda From the start of this sting, I have conferred with a small group of scientists who care deeply about open access. Some say that the open-access model itself is not to blame for the poor quality control revealed by Science's investigation. If I had targeted traditional, subscription-based journals, Roos told me, "I strongly suspect you would get the same result."* But open access has multiplied that underclass of journals, and the number of papers they publish. "Everyone agrees that open-access is a good thing," Roos says. "The question is how to achieve it."
The most basic obligation of a scientific journal is to perform peer review, arXiv founder Ginsparg says. He laments that a large proportion of open-access scientific publishers "clearly are not doing that." Ensuring that journals honor their obligation is a challenge that the scientific community must rise to. "Journals without quality control are destructive, especially for developing world countries where governments and universities are filling up with people with bogus scientific credentials," Ginsparg says.
As for the publisher that got Aline Noutcha to pony up a publication fee, the IP addresses in the e-mails from Scientific & Academic Publishing reveal that the operation is based in China, and the invoice they sent me asked for a direct transfer of $200 to a Hong Kong bank account.
The invoice arrived with good news: After a science-free review process, one of their journals—the International Journal of Cancer and Tumor—accepted the paper. Posing as lead author Alimo Atoa, I requested that it be withdrawn. I received a final message that reads like a surreal love letter from one fictional character to another:
Dear Alimo Atoa,
We fully respect your choice and withdraw your artilce.
If you are ready to publish your paper,please let me know and i will be at your service at any time.
Sincerely yours, Grace Groovy
^* Correction on 3 Oct. 2013: This sentence was clarified to better reflect Roos's view.
 

[scallop]

Toliko o naučnim publikacijama i rejtingu. Međutim, stvarnost je daleko komplikovanija. Toliko da se i ponuđeni link mora smatrati provokacijom, a ne informacijom.

[Meho Krljic]

Provo.. kacijom??? 
 
Dobro, ajde.