Daily Archives: September 27, 2008

User-generated science

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This is the headline on an interesting piece in last week’s Economist about the effect of the web on scientific publishing. Excerpt:

Peer-review possesses other merits, the foremost being the ability to filter out dross. But alacrity is not its strong suit. With luck a paper will be published several months after being submitted; many languish for over a year because of bans on multiple submissions. This hampers scientific progress, especially in nascent fields where new discoveries abound. When a paper does get published, the easiest way to debate it is to submit another paper, with all the tedium that entails.

Now change is afoot. Earlier this month Seed Media Group, a firm based in New York, launched the latest version of Research Blogging, a website which acts as a hub for scientists to discuss peer-reviewed science. Such discussions, the internet-era equivalent of the journal club, have hitherto been strewn across the web, making them hard to find, navigate and follow. The new portal provides users with tools to label blog posts about particular pieces of research, which are then aggregated, indexed and made available online.

Although Web 2.0, with its emphasis on user-generated content, has been derided as a commercial cul-de-sac, it may prove to be a path to speedier scientific advancement. According to Adam Bly, Seed’s founder, internet-aided interdisciplinarity and globalisation, coupled with a generational shift, portend a great revolution. His optimism stems in large part from the fact that the new technologies are no mere newfangled gimmicks, but spring from a desire for timely peer review…

You want fries with that $700 billion, Mr Paulson?

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A few days ago I mentioned that the markets were thinking about the possibility of the US government defaulting on its debts. Professor Charles Goodhart, a noted UK economist, then came on BBC Radio explaining that it was impossible for a government to default in this way, and I assumed I had simply misunderstood the signals. But in today’s Financial Times, Gillian Tett reports as follows:

This week, the cost of insuring against a US default via credit derivatives hit record levels. Yesterday, London dealers were quoting between 23 and 28 basis points, meaning it costs €23,000 ($33,600) to €28,000 a year to insure €10m in bonds. But the quotes for McDonald’s were about 25bp-26bp.

Yes, you read that right: the entity that brought us big fries and the floppy clown commands as much gravitas in the credit world as the mighty US of A.

These CDS prices might seem weird: it is extremely unlikely the US will default. But there are at least two factors making investors jittery. One is the rising cost of US bail-out plans. If you spend $50bn here (to support money market funds), $85bn there (to rescue AIG), another $30bn (to complete the Bear Stearns deal) and then $700bn (for a bail-out), soon you are talking serious numbers.

More specifically, the rescue proposals from Hank Paulson, US Treasury secretary, are threatening to push gross US debt well above 70 per cent of GDP for the first time since 1954…

Interesting, eh?

Evening in America

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[McCain] tried to remind viewers of his greater experience and heroic combat career, while also casting himself as a maverick outsider ready to storm the barricades. Mr. McCain wanted to be the true revolutionary in the room, but his is the Reagan revolution, and for a lot of people right now, it doesn’t look like morning in America.

The New York Times, summing up last night’s Presidential campaign debate.