the problem is with the interface of scientific literature. We cannot expect the wider population to be scientifically literate if they are not given the capability of understanding the artifacts we use to communicate about new scientific developments.

Pen and paper took us as far as the moon. It's about time we went to the stars.

Words are a lossy medium for describing rich, multidimensional ideas.

By analogy, it should act like a Google search, in that users can ask questions of any part of the scientific record. However, it should be unlike a Google search in that it synthesises information across all search results to produce a systems-level understanding of the search query, accessible to the user through many kinds of rich, dynamic... See more

There may be good reason to be optimistic about non-'scientists' taking part in science....Innocentive creates prizes to incentivise a distributed global network to solve specific problems for organisations who can't solve those problems in-house. Problems can be highly technical (see image below), and span across many domains. I will reuse... See more

public goods are not public goods if the public cannot understand them

Focusing solely on the incentive structures misses the elephant in the room: that we are still relying on 17th Century technology to capture and share knowledge.

So, representing systems dynamically is important for learning about and understanding systems deeply. This is important for both novices and experts. However, dynamic representations of systems are not just useful for learning. Dynamic simulations are models of some interacting phenomena, which makes them able to predict things.

Fully open, easily accessible data, together with open debate and version control, enables much greater scrutiny over results, which should lead to more accurate knowledge.