Disqus - Latest Comments for floatingnotes

Re: Zayn Malik, the Unlikely Muslim

floatingnotes — Fri, 09 Nov 2018 07:13:14 -0000

And, what proportion of Muslims believe that non-Muslims (especially, people those who are not Christians, Jews or Sabians) will/could go to heaven ? And what proportion of Ahl-e-Kitab people will go to heaven, according to Muslims ? How does this change depending on how many non-Muslims they know ?

Re: No pressure, then: religious freedom in Islam

floatingnotes — Sat, 01 Sep 2018 01:16:59 -0000

Define injustice.. would an Islamic society becoming Buddhist be havoc, in your definition ?

Re: Hostile Questions at Scientific Meetings

floatingnotes — Thu, 15 Feb 2018 19:38:45 -0000

"why she was presenting her work at the conference in question because, in his view, it revealed nothing about the topic" is a comment that is not directed at the science, but at meta-scientific issues, that may well be out of the presenter's hands, and for which, others, like the mentor or the conference organizer might be to blame, and the presenter would not be able to say so publicly. It is also subjective, and likely to be pointless.. and best avoided.

On the other hand, critiquing the science, or asking hard or deep questions, is a great way to get people thinking and make connections, and to have a follow-up conversation with the presenter at the same conference, etc etc. And if the presenter does not know, a simple "I have to think about that" will suffice. Not everybody hangs out on social media or follows up the post-publication comments on every paper, and having listened to a talk, when it is fresh in one's mind, hearing an interesting, thoughtful and pointed discussion about it afterwards is the icing on the cake, and one reason to go to meetings.

Re: Dogs Don’t Process Language With Their Left Brains, After All

floatingnotes — Fri, 07 Apr 2017 22:38:49 -0000

Wasn't there another left/right correction in a prominent journal within the last few years ?

Re: Humor corrupts. Do not laugh. - nature and plos: Declan Butler’s most recent salvo...

floatingnotes — Mon, 07 Jul 2008 02:07:21 -0000

@Neil: Yes, it is not clear what PLOS' intent is. I hope they will move towards a single repository with PLOS Biology or Computational Biology possibly still existing as a hotlist of interesting papers published in PLOS One; this hotlist could be expert-nominated, based on voting by expert subgroups, based on the opinion of professional editors, etc. Such a hotlist could even be constantly evolving.... My problem with maintaining elitist journals is: who decides what is ground-breakingly original ? And how many articles per year are allowed to call themselves ground-breakingly original ? Why create an elitist club with a few powerful gatekeepers ? Doesn't it make sense to just publish the articles, and then let people (Nature, Faculty of 1000, ScienceDaily, New York Times, Random Joe, PLOS, whoever) make their own constantly updated hotlists of what is ground-breakingly original ? I find that scientists have time and again proven themselves to be lazy when it comes to tedious, yet important career-decisions about others: using proxies like publication in PLOS Biology for scientific quality is all too tempting. Even if it is not true, the perception that this is the case exists. And I feel that this leads to a counter-productive and unhealthy attitude among scientists at all levels towards the science they do as a result of the unfairness of delegating judgements about scientific quality to a community of ex-scientist professional editors (most NO decisions at the glamor-mags are made by editors based on their own opinions, not based on the opinion of peer-reviewers).

Re: Humor corrupts. Do not laugh. - sci-fi: fascinating text of a discussion session...

floatingnotes — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 19:52:02 -0000

testing comments here