Orchid Myths... Busted!

[Connie Star]

This is an interesting discussion- I trust the aggregate knowledge of OB more than most books/articles about orchids. Just about everything I know about orchids I have learned here.
One way I have of judging a source is to look up something I know a great deal about and see how accurate it is on that topic. I have mixed feelings about the whole google thing. If anything, it's made it harder to access original research in my opinion. Information that used to be free is not anymore.
Anyway Hooray for Orchid Board!!

[Bud]

Orchids they say are expensive...thats definitely a myth...ordinary humans can own one nowadays...quite easily; whereas a century ago you need an expensive and dangerous expedition to the wilds to own one...

[Discus]

Originally Posted by Connie Star

If anything, it's made it harder to access original research in my opinion. Information that used to be free is not anymore.

Google Scholar is pretty good at finding original research. I don't think access to original research was ever free - somebody pays hefty journal subscription fees in a research library.

[camille1585]

Originally Posted by Discus

Google Scholar is pretty good at finding original research. I don't think access to original research was ever free - somebody pays hefty journal subscription fees in a research library.

Google scholar is even better than the original scientific databases (Web of Science, Scopus, PubMed...). Before I used to have to constantyl check 3-4 databases to avoid missing anything, since not all pull up everything when you do a search. Google Scholar in that respect is much better, hardly anything gets past it, even very recently published papers. There actually is a trend towards more and more open access journals. But like I've mentioned before on OB, if anyone ever would like a PDF of an article that they can't access, I'm more than happpy to pull it up for you and email it. Several people have asked me such favors before, and I really don't mind. My university has access to everything life science related, and then some.

[Discus]

Originally Posted by camille1585

Scientific matter does get onto Wikipedia, more than you'd think, and there are scientists out there (I know a few) who take time to write up articles for it.

More and more funding agencies are looking at your track record of "popular articles" and other public engagement activities; I think this is good as 1) most science is ultimately funded by tax-payers and 2) it gets information out there. I also think that by the time you've thought about your research at a level accessible to the lay-person, you've actually understood (and further pondered) your research in more depth.

If you look at the amount of misunderstanding around even basic scientific principles like evolution, statistics (and what they mean), experimental design (n=2 with two treatments is not really a rigorous experiment!) or even climate change, it's clear the public at large needs more exposure.

The trick is in getting scientists to 1) accept the value of this, which "wastes" "research time" and 2) being good communicators outside of their academic "in-group". Conversely, it can be quite hard to engage the public, who often (sometimes quite rightly) view any "science" talk as likely to be full up with technical jargon, with the visuals supplied as horrific graphs or "meaningless" numbers!

[Connie Star]

Originally Posted by Discus

Google Scholar is pretty good at finding original research. I don't think access to original research was ever free - somebody pays hefty journal subscription fees in a research library.

My field is medicine and the medical journals are getting more and more expensive. That's partly because a lot of the funding has come from pharmaceutical companies and that is more restricted in the better journals, at least in the US.