Here’s a vision of how science may work in the future.
Last month I scrambled to write a story about the evolution of swine flu for the New York Times. I talked to some of the top experts on the evolution of viruses who were, at that very moment, analyzing the genetic material in samples of the virus isolated around the world. One scientist, whom I reached at home, said, “Sure, I’ve got a little time. I’m just making some coffee while my computer crunches some swine flu. What’s up?”
All of the scientists were completely open with me. They didn’t wave me off because they had to wait until their results were published in a big journal. In fact, they were open with the whole world, posting all their results in real-time on a wiki. So everyone who wanted to peruse their analysis could see how it developed as more data emerged and as they used different methods to analyze it.
Now, a little over a month later, they’re publishing their results in the journal Nature. Normally we press folks would get a press release about the paper a week before publication, and it would be under strict embargo till it appeared in the journal. This morning, however, I got a press release pointing me to the published paper. And while Nature normally requires you to subscribe to read a paper, the flu paper is published under a Creative Commons license, which means anyone can get it and use it under the license’s terms.
While that’s all very exciting, the paper itself is an anxiety-triggering read. The new swine flu (which the authors now call S-IOV S-OIV) is only distantly related to other known swine flus, which means that there are a lot of flu viruses circulating around about which we know very little. And, as I mentioned in my article, it had already entered the human population several months before it came to light earlier this spring. Be sure to check out figure 1 (I’m inserting it below from the wiki–thanks, Creative Commons!), which shows how lots of bird, swine, and human season flu viruses mixed together to produce the new beast. The authors warn that the pattern of evolution they see is the sort of pattern the big flu pandemics followed when they emerged in the past.
With this sort of urgent situation at hand, the patient process of old-fashioned science publishing may have to be upgraded.
June 11th, 2009 at 10:15 am
This is exactly the sort of situation the Internet is perfect for — keeping scientists in communication with very rapid sharing of information. The wiki model is wonderful in this context.
How do they address the problem of filtering: how do you let everyone who needs access to the information get it, without getting swamped by people with nothing to contribute? I assume this wiki is invitation-only, or private in some way. But that means people in unrelated fields who might have useful information or insights can’t contribute. How do they balance this?
Carl: I should clarify–Only the co-authors of the paper could post to this wiki. But every step in their research is documented–was documented, actually, as it happened.
June 11th, 2009 at 10:49 am
[...] a useful table succinctly describing the phases of a pandemic. And here’s an interesting take on how traditional scientific publishing has (at least in this case) adapted itself to a more open, [...]
June 11th, 2009 at 11:10 am
Great development of course.. I just have one question, did the authors have to pay in order for Nature to publish to print it under a creative commons license? Like the authors have to do when publishing in PLoS?
June 11th, 2009 at 11:56 am
Scientific research is funded by tax dollars and should be made public domain anyway. I don’t see anything great about this being published under the creative commons license. It’s what should be happening anyway.
June 11th, 2009 at 3:41 pm
[...] way, this is a fascinating post by Carl Zimmer on how scientists used a wiki to collaborate in real time on the swine flu virus and [...]
June 11th, 2009 at 4:46 pm
[...] more here: Swine Flu Science: First Wiki, Then Publish | The Loom | Discover … SHARETHIS.addEntry({ title: “Swine Flu Science: First Wiki, Then Publish | The Loom | Discover [...]
June 11th, 2009 at 9:09 pm
Know of any other free resources for medical research? I can’t bring myself to pay $20 to read a paper.
June 12th, 2009 at 10:34 am
June 13th, 2009 at 9:38 pm
Press Release – Researchers Question Nature, Cause and Treatment of “Swine Flu” Outbreak
http://www.checktheevidence.co.uk/cms/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=231&Itemid=75
The Swine Flu Propaganda Explained
http://www.checktheevidence.co.uk/cms/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=230&Itemid=75
June 14th, 2009 at 4:11 pm
[...] here is a collection of online maps focusing on H1N1 cases. And an interesting article on Discover: Last month I scrambled to write a story about the evolution of swine flu for the New York [...]
June 16th, 2009 at 11:33 am
[...] under Creative Commons, allowing me to put up my own copy as long as I provide attribution. Carl Zimmer discusses some of the novel aspects of this publication [...]
June 17th, 2009 at 1:54 pm
[...] if somehow you missed it, do see Carl Zimmer’s fine post on Swine Flu Science: First Wiki, Then Publish and Brandon Keim’s fascinating look at how Maple Seeds Ride Self-Generated [...]
July 2nd, 2009 at 4:50 pm
Im a bit annoyed about this whole swine flu thing! What about the poor with malaria? That is definitely killing more people… http://bit.ly/3s9FRD
August 5th, 2009 at 12:15 pm
[...] 记者Carl Zimmer他的一篇文章中描述了他采访一些世界著名流感病毒专家时的感受，当时他们正在研究H1N1（猪流感）病毒的基因构成： 所有的这些科学家对我一点都不遮遮掩掩，他们不会因为要把研究成果发表到像Nature这样的期刊上而给我闭门羹吃，实际上，不但对我，他们对整个世界都十分开放——他们把自己的研究成果和数据通过一个wiki发布给全世界！这样，任何一个人（如果愿意）都可以在他们的研究成果上继续，甚至从别人的研究中得到启发，另辟蹊径。 [...]