Blogging and ‘Fair Use’

Posted on April 26, 2007 by Chris Rowan

Update: The awesome power of the blogosphere has got Shelley an apology (see also this comment for some welcome clarification on her usage rights). Whilst this is great news, I think that the murky issues of where blogs stand with respect to copyright law remain; we’re going to have to remain vigilant on this one.
A couple of days ago, Shelley over at Retrospectacle wrote a post examining this paper from the Journal of the Science of Food and Agriculture published by John Wiley and Sons, and explained that contrary to what many media outlets were proclaiming, it did not provide evidence that your daily fruit ration was best ingested in alcoholic form. The next day
she received a letter from the journal editors, claiming that she had breached copyright by including a table and graph from the paper in her post, and threatening to unleash the Wiley lawyers on her.
It goes without saying that this smacks more than a little of bullying (why contact Shelley and not the Seed Overlords?), but it’s also a matter of some concern for all science bloggers (senso lato), because a large part of what most of us do is write about recently published research, and sometimes the only way to really describe the results is to use figures and tables from the papers in question. When I do this, I always make sure that I link to the paper in question (I normally try to find a web page for the authors, too), and I clearly state which figure I’m using; and like many people, I was under the impression that this was acceptable under ‘Fair Use’ guidelines. It seems that some people beg to differ, and if they’re right then practically all of us could be in the legal firing line.

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Categories: academic life, bloggery, public science

New planets around Gliese 581

Posted on April 25, 2007 by Chris Rowan

Unsurprisingly, there’s lots of fuss about the new planet discovered around the red dwarf Gliese 581 (read the European Southern Observatory press release here). Planets, I should say, because they’ve actually confirmed two more in a system where they’d detected one already. The Gliese 581 system is now known to consist of:

  • One 15 Earth-mass planet, orbiting the host star in 5.4 days.
  • One 5 Earth-mass planet orbiting in 13 days.
  • One 8 Earth-mass planet, orbiting in 84 days.


(new discoveries in bold; more details here)
It’s the smallest of the two new discoveries which is hogging the limelight, because its orbit is within the zone where temperatures allow the presence of liquid water. It doesn’t mean that there is any there, of course. In fact, a mass doesn’t give us much to go on in terms of what it’s actually like.
What I find more interesting is the more general trend we’re seeing in exoplanet discoveries. It’s only been a decade or so since we knew for sure that other planetary systems besides our own actually existed, although our instruments were only sensitive enough to detect “hot Jupiters” whose orbits grazed the surfaces of their host stars. But as we’ve gradually developed more sensitive detection techniques, we’re discovering less massive planets, with larger orbits, and even multiple bodies within the same system (although the lower relative mass of the star also made things easier in this case). Clearly, what we’ve seen up to this point is a very selective view of what’s out there, biased by the limitations of our telescopes; and suggests that as soon as we get the ability to detect smaller bodies in planetary systems more like our own, there’s a real prospect that we will indeed start finding them.
Now all we need is a telescope big enough to do some extrasolar geology with…

Categories: planets

When reviewers go bad

Posted on April 25, 2007 by Chris Rowan

I’ve discussed the peer review system before (see the accompanying repost and a more recent lament), but recent posts by Lab Lemming, Yami, Am I A Woman Scientist and Thermochronic have inspired me to think some more about a common scourge: the (usually) anonymous reviews that are perhaps a little more negative than is strictly justified. As Lemming puts it:

…the most common complaint about “bad” reviews is not the amount of criticism. Rather, it is generally the lack of science on which that criticism is based. Most people get over fair but harsh reviews; rather it is the inane, mean-spirited (and always anonymous) reviews that are really frustrating.

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Categories: academic life, publication

The Solomon earthquake in close-up and wide-angle

Posted on April 25, 2007 by Chris Rowan

Update: NASA Earth observatory has now put up a much nicer, cloud free-image showing uplifted reefs on the other side of the island, a smaller version of which I’ve added below the fold.
The large subduction zone earthquake that hit the Solomon Islands at the beginning of April had quite a dramatic effect on the coastline of Ranongga, one of the closest islands to the site of the rupture: tectonic uplift of up to 3 metres stranded large areas of coral reef above the high water mark:

solomon_reefc.jpg

solomon_reefa.jpg

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Categories: earthquakes

Real peer review

Posted on April 24, 2007 by Chris Rowan

(Reposted from ye olde blog to accompany my next post – you might want to read the old comments)
Peer review is the sacred core of the self-correcting machinery of science. Before it can be published, a new paper must pass muster with qualified experts in the field it covers, ensuring that dodgy results and poorly supported conclusions do not make it out into the literature to impede the grand progress of the scientific enterprise.
Well, that’s the theory – but what’s it like in practice?

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Categories: academic life, publication